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1904. 





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COHfRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE SOUL IN 
SILHOUETTE 




With Tracings Here and There 

— _ B Y 



EDWARD EARLE VURINTON 



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lLm^»«?V «f OONQRESS 

1 uCl ID J904 

4 ^oayrJeht Entry * 
CLASS ^ XXo. Nd 
PY B 



Copyright, 1904 

Edward Earle Purinton 

New York City 



Printed and Bound by 

The Acme Publishing Company 

Morgantown West Va. 



Table of Topics 



TABLE OF TOPICS 



Prelude 9 

The Soul in Silhouette 11 

The Sphinx of Purpose 13 

Dream or Vision 14 

On to Success 15 

Life and Death 16 

The Divine Feminine 17 

The Whisper of the Soul 18 

Aspiration 19 

Dawn 20 

A Magic Secret 22 

The Making of Time 23 

Whatever Is Earthy 24 

The Three Paths 26 

An Episode Among the Planets 27 

Paid by the Day 28 

Doubt's Unreason 30 

Understanding 31 

The Mystic Isle of Sex 32 

Speechless 34 

To Her Who Feels 35 

Let There Be Light 36 

Hope Ever Shining 37 

The Kiss 38 

Both Lover and Friend 39 

A Vision of the Night 40 

A Sure Remedy 41 

Only a Worm 42 

Humanity's Prisoners 43 

The Soul of a Flower 44 

Missing the Mark 45 

The Self-Accusing Verdict 46 

Fulfilling the Great Command 47 

Return to Nature 48 

Environment 50 

The Marriage of God and Nature 51 

Her Answer 52 

Virgin Gold 53 

The Pursuit of Pleasure 54 



TABLE OF TOPICS 



Mothering Souls 56 

As a Flower 57 

Two Views of Death 58 

A Bit of Crepe 60 

Sunset on the River 61 

Love Is God 62 

God in Sin 63 

Poets Piteous 64 

Stream and Source 65 

The Flower of Woman's Love 66 

A Rainbow Smile 67 

Measure Me an Hour 68 

Renunciation 69 

Love and the Lark 70 

Through Psychic to Mystic 71 

Aborted 74 

How the Dimple Grew 75 

The Illegitimate Child 76 

Why the Shell Shatters 77 

A Reversed Theology 78 

Love and Duty 79 

Bohemia Beckons 80 

A Fledgeling Flutters 82 

Finding the Focus 83 

The Place Auspicious 84 

A Surcharged Flood 85 

God Only 86 

"Abandoned" 87 

Where Dwells the Sunlit Soul 88 

Life's Husbandman 89 

The Unfinished Portrait 90 

Blind Deity Prays 91 

My Infinite Self 92 

For the Song's Own Sake 93 

A Tottering Tripod 94 

The First Dream 95 

I Am That I Am 96 

Twilight 97 

A Beacon to Eternity 100 



Prelude 

I sing the Soul Sublime. The world asks why. 

I do not know; 
Except that every flower must droop and die 

Unless it grow. 

And if it grow; although its stalk at first 

Was scentless while 
Engrossed within the soil whence blossoms burst 

From vestment vile; 

At last the petals render forth complete 

Its fragrance hid 
When men misjudged; — a spirit pure and sweet 

Though weeds amid. 

And thus the Soul of Me, if unrestrained 

Must grow until 
It wafts the message all the bud contained; 

Where'er it will. 



Tlie Soul in Silhouette 



Behind a canvas stands a maid. Behind the maid there gleams 

A brilliant light whose splendor fills the room. 
And yet her face upon the screen a shadow casts, that seems 

To be forever veiled in deepest gloom. 
The silhouette is graceful. But the roses from her cheek 

Have fled, as well the sunbeams from her hair. 
The lips are cold. Her face's meagre outline bids us seek 

The maid herself — her charms but hinted there. 

How earth-enshrouded phantoms do engage our mortal sight 

Foreshadowing some entity afar. 
The blackness of the form indeed epitomizes Night — 

We grope — we wonder whence and what we are. 
We gaze upon the shadow cast by object mortal, since 

Y/e dare not face the Light of Truth as yet; 
But still each dim-limned figure with its god-like features hints 

The Universal Soul in Silhouette. 



U 



The Sphinx of Purpose 

He toiled from morn till night, nor ceased 

A moment from his labors. 
As large as Thing he wrought, increased 

The questions of his neighbors. 
The Thing was shapeless, vaguely vast; 

Unused were eyes to seeing 
So huge a work — in all the past 

None like it came to being. 
It was not bread, it was not wine 

They could not grasp and taste it: 
So how indeed could they divine 

The plan of him who placed it? 
Their idle tongues besought him then 

Who toiled in dumb submission. 
Response came not — save once again 

The chisel's competition. 
They looked askance at this, the Thing 

Whose very size eluding 
The estimate of such as cling 

To records, kept obtruding. 
The Thing that throve on labor's throes 

Grew more and more commanding; 
So grew their spite — as stature rose 

Beyond their understanding. 
They hoped each morning might reveal 

Some answer to their query. 
Instead the evening made them feel 

The Thing became more eerie. 
They lived in vain, they died in vain — 

The silence still unbroken. 
But now The Sphinx of brawn and brain 

Through centuries has spoken. 



They ask me why I toil? and what 
I build? And where my wages? 

I answer not. I answer not. 

I answer through the ages. 



13 



Dream ot Vision 

A youth watched an apple fall swift to the ground. 
"Now what is the law," questioned he, "by which bound 
An object falls down — and not up or around 

And falls with unerring precision?" 
He wondered and pondered and troubled his head 
With foolish imaginings — so the world said; 
"A good-for-naught dreamer, on phantasy fed." 

But was it a dream — or a vision? 

A man saw the steam from a kettle's mouth rise. 
He begged of the learned, beseeching the wise 
To answer him why the steam rose to the skies. 

He met only scorn and derision; 
"A grown man like you to be playing with steam! 
Your feverish brain with its clouds must needs teem. 
Cease wasting yourself on a profitless dream." 

Oh, was it a dream — or a vision? 

An ancient geographer pored o'er a map. 

The people that passed him would grumble and gape, 

And ask him what puzzle he held in his lap — 

Or was it a guide-book Elysian? 
Then when he declared that the world was not flat, 
They mauled him and mobbed him; — "Take this and take that. 
You impudent dreamer." Still looked he thereat; 

A dream — a mere dream — or a vision? 

Just lately a youth flew a mystical kite 
Uncannily gleaming though black was the night. 
The neighbors, afraid of the unforseen light 

Came angrily into collision; 
"In league with the sorcerers, devils and elves, 
This eerie man wanders and soars and delves, 
The dreams of the madman but speak for themselves." 

A dream — think again — or a vision? 

A babe in a manger, a lad yet ungrown 

Quite conscious that He was prime heir to a throne. 

Declared that He owned the world — ruled it alone, 

A kingdom of joys Paradisian. 
"Just hear the mad blasphemy this fellow saith." 
They mocked Him. They stoned Him. They nailed Him to death. 
The dream that He voiced still possessed His last breath. 

A dream — and no more — or a vision? 

14 



O Dreamers, dream on! For your dreams are the seeds 

To germinate centuries later in deeds. 

Heed not the blind world whence the babble proceeds 

Confusing a dream with a vision. 
Though mortals condemn, neither falter not faint; 
Posterity rises to call you a saint. 
Admit to your Soul the full Light, free of taint — 

Your vision — your heavenly vision! 



On to Success 

From off the heights of Mount Success I heard a splendid cheer- 
It sounded like "Achieve!" 
So on I sped. 

But this was just the echo. For again, as I drew near 
Rang out the Voice. "Believe!" — 
It really said. 



15 



Life and Death 



Life is but a longing 
That thrills until it throbs; 
And Death is just a dreading 
That sickens as it sobs. 

There is no fear that threatens 
A mortal mind and heart, 
But whatsoe'er it touches 
Must fade and fall apart. 

There is no hope that blossoms 
Where soul of mortal dwells. 
But from it you may gather 
A wreath of immortelles. 



16 



The Divine Feminine 

When a bard would sing, in a bard's rich rhyme 

Of the thing that he loves the most. 
He lifts his voice in an ode sublime 

To a maiden — the poet's boast; 
For in all this world there is none or naught 

Whose thrill can his song refine 
Expressing the Something his soul has sought 

As a feminine form divine. 

When a sculptor moulds the curves of grace 

That bound the beauteous All, 
He moulds her bosom, her arm, her face 

Whose loveliness casts their thrall; 
For in all this world there is no caress 

When tender limbs entwine 
But can aught more than its dearth confess 

To a feminine form divine. 

When a child has bruised his fragile flesh 

And wails with a childish grief, 
He hides his head in the garment's mesh 

Of a mother's soft relief; 
For in all this world there is no true balm 

Whence smiles through sorrows shine 
That dare approach to the trustful calm 

Of a feminine form divine. 

When a lover feels emotions fill 

His being with silent bliss. 
He wooes with a reverent look the thrill 

Of a virgin's raptured kiss; 
For in all this world there is nowhere whence 

There blends the mine and thine 
In a Oneness like to the spirit-sense 

Of a feminine Soul divine. 



O Man, with your massive brain, you wait 

To reason it deep and long. 
While a woman feels. And the powers of Fate 

With a feeling's impulse throng. 
And this is the why of a thing so odd — 

That men should their throne resign; — 
There is less of the human to dog the god 

In the Feminine Most Divine. 

17 



The Whisper of ike Soul 

When perplexities are crowding 

And the world seems bleak and cold; 
When your doubts and dreads are shrouding 

All your hopes in gloom untold; 
When the sun eludes your vision 

And the skies seem far away; 
When your efforts meet derision 

And you fall misfortune's prey; 
When your prospects cease to glisten 

And your fears portentous roll; 
Ah, Dear Heart, then listen, listen 

For the Whisper of the Soul. 

Men may speak, and men advise you 

Books may yield their ancient lore, 
Yet the Truth withal denies you — 

You must seek for something more. 
All this manifest Creation 

Burst in being — star or stone. 
When it heard the revelation 

Of a whisper all its own. 
Heeding not the things without it 

Heeding but the Voice within 
Life unfolding dare not doubt It; 

Doubting, doubting — this is sin. 
Hear and heed the gentle calling 

Urging you to utmost goal; 
Feel the thrill your heart enthralling 

Through the Whisper of the Soul. 

Oh, the music in the Whisper 

Of the Soul's seraphic strain; 
Soft and sweet as baby lisper 

Begs a kiss — nor begs in vain; 
Gracious as a maiden blushing 

Raptured from her first embrace; 
Mighty as a torrent rushing 

Unconcerned from place to place; 
Silent, mute, and uncomplaining 

If neglected overlong 
Yet forever straining, straining 

In the one amid the throng; 
Voice that moves the wisest sages. 

Voice that sways the truest bard. 



18 



Voice of Wisdom through the ages. 
Voice of Love, our hearts to guard; 

Voice that sums a god's ambition 
Sweeping clean from pole to pole; 

Voice whose faultless, pure rendition 
Is the Whisper of the Soul. 



Aspiration 



The lonely forest Pine, aspiring from his early infancy to tower 

aloft 
Discerns above the lowly altitude 
That settles down upon the vulgar brood 
Of grasses, weeds and cringing herbage sheltered close in Mother 

Earth's embrace so soft. 

Beholding him askance whose slow and painful growth but puts 
him out of touch with them. 

They chatter volubly with jealous ire 

Predicting such a stand a demise dire. 

The Pine matured abides exalted. Long ago the herbage with- 
ered — root and stem. 



The lonely Human Soul that lifts his longing eyes and yearns to 

dwell where all is Light 
Must vision far beyond the common throng; 
And whilst they jostle hurriedly along 
On transitory pleasures bent, must his horizon cloudless keep — 

the end in sight. 

A thousand maledictions, persecutions let the herd that cannot 

understand 
Heap hard upon thee, splendid-sighted Soul; — 
Deep oceans of oblivion shall roll 
Above their lives forgotten, when at last the Universal thou hast 

nobly spanned. 

19 



Dawn 

In the silence 

Mystic silence 
Of the dim and dusky morn, 

Love has blended 

All the splendid 
Prospects of a day unborn. 

Lightly looming 

Darkness dooming 
From Aurora's matin feast, 

Love revealing 

Paints Love's feeling. 
Tints the zenith, gilds the East. 

Far from caring 

With whom sharing 
Brilliant jewels of the day. 

Love arrays her. 

Love displays her 
After Love's impulsive way. 

Worlds lay hidden 

Still unbidden 
Yet to lift their dewy face; 

Till Love lit them. 

Till Love fit them 
Thus to shine with Love's glad grace. 

Shadows darkling, 

Dewdrops sparkling 
Blend to beautify the earth. 

Sunbeams seeing 

Moonbeams fleeing 
Dance with glee at sunbeams' birth. 

From their sleeping 

Creatures creeping 
Crawling, flying, greet the light; 

Through with homing 

Now for roaming 
Spend the strength restored by night. 

Dreams chaotic. 

Spells narcotic 
Hazy, misty, unexplained 

Fading, fading. 

Fast abrading 
All their outlines, lose them — feigned. 

20 



Dreamland's plunder 

Piled in wonder 
Sinks, and sinking is no more. 

Fancies fleeting, 

Films depleting 
Dread the day, and upward soar. 

In their slumber 

Men still cumber 
Weary minds with foolish fret; 

Feel the falling 

Of the palling 
Of the night with blind regret. 

But the paining 

Of the waning 
Of the nooning of the mind 

Is a blessing. 

Which confessing 
Humans must its fruitage find. 

Skyward soaring, 

Hopes restoring 
Through the ether's mystic void. 

Finds man's spirit 

Means to cheer it 
That the day has not enjoyed. 

Up, up yonder 

Spirits wander 
Newly nourished from the sky; 

In the morning 

Minds adorning 
With a freshness born on high. 

So be grateful 

To the fateful 
Flitting fancies of the dusk; 

Whither leading 

Souls proceeding 
Leave at night their bodies' husk. 

Whence returning 

They discerning 
Part the clouds and thrill things numb; 

Creatures drooning 

Hear them crooning 
"Wake and work! For Day has come." 

21 



A Magic Seczet 



There are folks forever frowning, 

Life's delights so deeply drowning 
In the teary dark recesses hid by gloomy jutting brow. 

That their vision fills with ghastly 

Ghostly spectres rising vastly 
From the frowning, weeping chasm gulfing pleasure in its slough. 

There are other people smiling, 

Joys upon each other piling 
In the wrinkly little hollows where a smile is wont to play; 

And to look at them you never 

Would imagine that they ever 
Had a blessed thing to do but smile and coo the livelong day. 

Now I know a little secret 

That is good for all the week, yet 
On a dismal dark blue Monday, 'twould excel in magic wile; 

Slip the frown a little lower 

From the brow it lingers o'er 
With a sudden twist just turn it round your lips — and there's a 
smile. 



22 



The Making of Time 

"Why do you grieve?" 
Hope said to Sorrow; 
"Time's glad reprieve 
Comes with the morrow." 

"For those who mourn," 
Sobbed sad-eyed Sorrow, 
"Memory's bourn 
Suffers no morrow." 



Naught — at the last 
Is to-day or to-morrow, 
Save what from the Past 
Or the Future we borrow. 



23 



Wl^aiever is Eart/^y 



I stroked the soft petals enfolding a rose 

Whose cheek with the welcome of Summerland glows. 

The song of its soul into harmony stirred 

My heart with a rapture too fine for a word. 

My spirit responded, and blended, and yearned 

To cherish the fragrance whose thrill it discerned; 

But fading and fading and withering fast 

The petals resolved into ruin at last. 

And as the sweet soul of the flower took wing 

It seemed to my listening longing to sing: — 

" Whatever is earthy partakes of earth's blight. 

'Twas born in a day. 'Twill die in a night.'* 

I gathered possessions, I hoarded more gold 
Than Capital's coffers expanded could hold. 
With bonds and securities, chattels and stocks 
I thought to obtain the one key that unlocks 
The wealth of a Universe waiting to pour 
On him who possessing sought more and still more. 
But Failure o'ertook me. And at Failure's side 
Lean Poverty stalked, first to rob, then deride. 
Between them they snatched my last pauperish pence 
Then eerily echoed, ere tottering hence; — 
"Whatever is earthy partakes of earth's blight. 
'Twas born in a day. 'Twill die in a night." 

I fondled my child — a mere babe at the breast. 
I watched her mature with a joy self-confessed. . 
I planned her a future eclipsing the sun. 
But, ah, just before her life-work was begun 
The Angel of Death cut her down in her bloom — 
To prove how mortality speeds to its doom. 
Bemoaning the close of the maid's bright career 
I watched her as marble stretched stiff in her bier; 
Beseeching the heavens my eyes seemed to see 
Transcribed by the angels, this fateful decree: — 
"Whatever is earthy partakes of earth's blight. 
'Twas born in a day. 'Twill die in a night." 

I filled endless archives with ponderous books. 
My library bordered with ruminant nooks 
Invited mad worry to banish its care 
And dazzle the brain with the brilliances there. 
I buried the past in a book-lover's grave — 
As if the dead pages were able to save. 

24 



But feverish, fancies despoiled my hot brain 
Exposing the scars of my sorrow and pain. 
My brain overwrought, heard through all its wild whirl 
The leaves, as I thumbed them, so scornfully curl; — 
"Whatever is earthy partakes of earth's blight. 
'Twas born in a day. 'Twill die in a night." 

I summoned my friends into revelry's hall. 
I sought in its vintage to blur the black pall 
That settled and settled and blotted my life 
With shadows of dread of oblivion rife. 
I jested and sang and heaped high the glib cup 
Of merriment meaningless. Dine then and sup 
And laugh with a leer that the devils would shun 
Till day with its deadening damning is done. 
Then hear in the watches of night a ghost wail 
This sentence uncanny to make your heart quail; — 
"Whatever is earthy partakes of earth's blight. 
'Twas born in a day. 'Twill die in a night." 

I flung me insane at a mountain of work. 

Expected that in its recesses must lurk 

Some balm for my spirit, some peace for my heart. 

When once I fell idle a twitch and a start 

Reminded again that a memory mad 

Was waiting to trap me. Until I turned glad 

To lose me in toil. But my sinews grew thin. 

My senses aquiver with labor's wild din 

Betrayed me and mocked me and strove to proclaim 

That warning monotonous, ever the same: — 

"Whatever is earthy partakes of earth's blight. 

'Twas born in a day. 'Twill die in a night." 

I yielded to Sorrow. She stripped my life lorn 

Of all the bright baubles that used to adorn; 

I felt my friends slipping, my happiness o'er 

While yesterday's hopes seemed to beckon no more. 

I scanned the black sky for a token of day — 

Dim Dawn was still hiding in darkness away. 

But list! a monition thrilled low to instil 

Fresh courage and hope in my impotent will; 

I hearked to the Voice. And a whisper came soft 

To comfort me, buoy me, and bear me aloft; — 

" Whatever is earthless forever remains 
At peace with Itself till Eternity wanes.^* 

25 



The Three Paths 

"Indulge!" shouts the glutton, the sot, the roue, 
"For pleasure Is sure, — and it lasts but a day. 
Let merriment spill from the wine of life's brim. 
Come, watch the lights sparkle — though vision be dim 
With dew^s of the morning or shades of the night, 
Since swift on the heels of the dawn flees the light. 
Let passion run red. Let Flesh be our God. 
Ere swift we return, whence we came, to the sod." 

"Renounce!" shrieks the monk, the ascetic, the sage, 
"With youth comes Desire — but Wisdom with age. 
The wants of the body are beastly and bad; 
So turn from your chamberings wantonly mad. 
Your appetites, flesh-pots, your instincts to lust 
Ere Punishment damn you and doom you to dust. 
For bodies are sired of the Devil — while souls 
Are fathered of God, who exacts His just tolls." 

"Exalt!" cries the spirit illumined and pure, 

"The God of Desire. Let all longing endure. 

Enjoy the grosser — but lift it on high. 

Refine your delights till they blend with the sky. 

For tasteless and touchless and formless are joys 

Whose ecstacy clings, and yet never once cloys. 

The world is a Paradise. Enter and sip 

Its waters ambrosial. But first — cleanse the lip.'' 



26 



An Episode Among tf^e Planets 

Mother Earth lay lonely weeping 
In the early morning light. 

For her sister, snugly sleeping 
By her side throughout the night 

Was with break of day fast fading — 

Mistress Moon had fled abashed 
As King Sun, his pomp parading, 
On her gaze his splendor flashed. 

Mother Earth lay there a-sighing 
Face all tearful with her rue — 

Which some thoughtless folk espying 
Call the tears but morning dew. 

When His Royal Sunship riding 
Sumptuous among the clouds 

Caught a glimpse of beauty hiding 
In the face her sorrow shrouds. 

Gently then from clouds descending 
Softly sped the Solar Lord, 

Brought to speedy, happy ending 
All the gloom he so abhorred. 

For he boldly kissed the grieving 
Tearful Earth at break of day. 

At his touch the tears kept leaving — 
Till he kissed them all away. 

And they say that every growing 
Fragrant flower and luscious fruit 

Lies in dimpled hollow, showing 
Where she smiled upon his suit. 



27 



Paid by the Day 



His forehead was furrowed, his brow tightly knitted 

His cheek deeply sunken, his eye dull and dim; 
His coat, frayed and shiny, his form poorly fitted — 

A form that appeared but the shadow of him. 
His step automatic propelled a dead creature 

That sambled about with a crawl and a creep; 
His listless demeanor shov/ed always some feature 

That could but remind you of something asleep. 
My heart deeply grieving, his footsteps I followed 

And watched him at last to a desk stiffly climb; — 
A desk that his skeleton elbows had hollowed 

And marked with the dents of endurance sublime. 
A look of despair crossed a face bleak and cheerless. 

All ashen and cold with the sorrows of years 
And yet with its anguish so stony and tearless, — 

For tears turn to ice when grief genuine nears. 
His lips replied not to my unspoken question. 

His brain must concentrate to earn his scant pay. 
His soul, though, made answer, amid its congestion; 

"A word explains all — I am paidhy the day.'^ 

"With figures and facts in black myriads trooping 

Forever I cipher and cipher away 
While still I sit stooping and stifling and drooping, 

For I am a chattel — and paid by the day. 
Through ten weary hours, ten hours together, 

Of sunshine and shadow, here shackled I stay; 
The sunshine infuses the outer world's weather — 

The shadows are his who is paid by the day. 
The hours that throb their slow march o'er the dial 

Appear with the sun to yield Hope a faint ray. 
But morrows and yesterdays make grim denial — 

For hours are endless when paid by the day. 
I once had a brain and a heart and a longing 

And hopes flitted past me to brighten my way, 
But stringent and strident necessities thronging 

Have choked the soul dumb in him paid by the day. 
There once was a time when my thought to things higher 

Than figuring fallacies tended to stray; 
But backward I drew it — no man dare aspire 

When chained to a consciousness paid by the day. 
A brain automatic; a hand ever steady: 

A spirit content not to dream or to play; 
Instead, with a willingness never unready 

28 



To slave for its deadening pay by the day. 
Existence a grind and your wage but a pittance 

Enough just to keep your sad soul in its clay 
While time with its clangingly cold unremittence 

Oppresses and maddens him paid by the day. 
Though spirit be fainting and body be halting. 

Still on you must race in the victorless fray. 
Your time is your master's. Your wage is defaulting — 

He durst not be ill who is paid by the day." 

"I rise in the morning — my soul the while falling 

And pleading and sobbing as souls alone may. 
For harshly and hatefully Duty is calling, 

That taskmaster Duty who pays by the day. 
I sink in the evening — but not to sweet sleeping 

Black spectres foreboding loom up in array 
Portentously shuddering! chills of fear creeping 

Congealing the hope in me paid by the day. 
The gamins that grovel, mere waifs in the alley 

Have naught but their vagrancy's voice to obey. 
Let me though — a man — for a brief moment dally. 

Then swift the thought goads — 'You are paid by the day.' 
The bird and the flower, in fields bright and sunny 

Unfold their souls' sweetness with none to say nay. 
But they have not learned the vast value of money 

That gilds an aggrandizement paid by the day. 
My spirit grows deaf with the dollars' loud clinking 

Whose avalanche brooks neither doubt nor delay. 
In goblets of gold their frail health they are drinking. 

They? Not they who toil and are paid by the day. 
The creature that buys my lean soul has his pleasure — 

A plutocrat's pomp with a showman's display. 
But ah, his great coffers heaped high could not measure 

The sorrows of families paid by the day. 
My children are human as well as my neighbor's. 

My wife is as noble — and none can gainsay. 
Yet let them all starve. While the fruits of my labors 

Are swallowed by him who pays me by the day." 

"Ah, v/hence can I hope in my madness to borrow 
Some sympathy's boon for which only I pray? 

Since men must provide for their own meagre morrow 
They cannot befriend whom they pay by the day. 

The world heeds me not. It is busy devising 

Some means whence its profits more ponderous weigh — 

Save when it is occupied deeply despising 

29 



The. plight of a thing scantly paid by the day. 
The moralists urge me to keep my eyes straining 

Both outward and onward, and upward alway; 
But forces without and beyond are disdaining 

And Heaven is haze to him paid by the day. 
No more do I find bits of comfort accruing 

By looking within. For my soul must inveigh 
With turmoil both righteous and wroth the pursuing 

Of demons incarnate that pay by the day. 
I close my eyes then. Let my vision slow blinding 

Grow numb with the senses that all must decay 
And atrophy wholly beneath the dead binding 

Of pressure external that pays by the day. 
The Infinite Spirit within me is pleading 

But I must forever its earnest betray. 
Who cares for a god when his being is bleeding 

With anguish untold? Does God pay by the day? 
A piece of accoutrement shaped for the battle 

That Greed fights with Greed till the world has grown grey 
A mindless and soulless and spiritless chattel — 

This chattel the Devil still pays by the day." 



Doubt's Unreason 

If now and then a cloud obscure the Sun 
Do I, construing that its course is run, 
Declare the solar system out of place 
And swift effacement threatening the race? 

If now and then a doubt obstruct my view — 
To passing cloud in mortal vision due. 
Shall I conclude that Truth has lost its light 
And God interred the world in endless night? 



30 



Understanding 



The beggar moaned without the gate. 
He cursed his lot, that cruel Pate 
Had left him there in rags to wait 

While Wealth within lay sleeping. 
The night was raw. The wind blew chill. 
He plead and plead and plead until 
His voice became a wail. But still 

Upon him Death came creeping. 

"Dear Lady, give me just a crust! 

'Tis life I beg — so beg I must. 

For Death is close. And o'er my dust 

The snows will soon be falling." 
Yet on she slumbered deep and long. 
No beggar — nor the passing throng 
Could waken her; be right or wrong 

The manner of the calling. 

Then suddenly a voice rang out 

In tones that bore no trace of doubt 

As from afar a joyous shout 

Betokened some one coming. 
It was the Master's homeward stride. 
He flashed a key — the door swung wide; 
He kissed his lovely virgin bride 

Nor felt the winds benumbing. 

Within the walls a soft caress, 
A look — a kiss — a touch to bless 
A man and make his soul confess 

That Heaven has descended. 
Without the walls, a freezing form 
That gasps and grovels in the storm 
And starves for want of something warm 

Till life's despair has ended. 

Without a woman's soul there pleads 
To sate his body's grosser needs 
A man who, begging, intercedes — 

Her passion's throb demanding. 
Within a woman's soul there lies 
A lover, for whose touch she cries; 
He owns her love. Nor begs nor buys. 

The Key is "Understanding." 



31 



The Mystic Isle of Sex 

A beautiful stream in the woodland is flowing 

Where flowers are growing. 

And Nature, bestowing 
Her smiles and caresses, sends breezes that blowing 
From out the South Summer Land sweeten the air. 

The stream in the course of its eddyings winding, 

A spot of land finding. 

Its narrow bed binding — 
A verdure-clad island its vista thus blinding 
Its separates then, to each bayou a share. 

But on past the island, the branches uniting 

Their ripples inviting. 

Are speedily righting 
The brief incompleteness they felt when first sighting 
That island that cuts the one stream into two. 



The stream we call Life from the Infinite rushing 

Its barriers flushing 

Its obstacles crushing 
Discovers an island. Though flov/ers are blushing. 
Yet serpents are brev/ing their venom^ous rue. 

The Isle is so mystic men scarce can discern it 

Nor study, nor learn it; 

So many would spurn it 
That soon a drear waste the race human must turn it 
Did not some brave soul dare to fathom its shore. 

As if to escape the dark wiles of its wonder 

Two bayous that sunder. 

Plunge over, delve under 
Divide the one stream. And dividing they thunder 
Their mad discontent till united once more. 

The Isle is called Sex. It enchants with rare flowers 

Whose fragrance endowers 

Ecstatic the hours 
While visitors tarry, held thralled in its bowers. 
Yet serpents are hiding — beware their dread fangs. 

32 



The stream known as Woman flows placid forever. 

But currents that sever 

The Man-stream can never 
Be trusted for transport, save through strong endeavor; 
Else ruin ensues — how the knell of it clangs! 

Upon this dim island have errors erected 

And usage protected 

And churchlings elected 
A wall so forbidding its ban has effected 
Complete isolation from either lone side. 

And Life, cut in two, flows with surging foreboding 

Its twin-banks corroding 

Its twin-impulse goading 
Its twin-soul with separate anguish o'erloading 
The wastes of the shore with the wrecks of the tide. 



Some day eons hence, an upheaval will shatter 

The heaps of earth-matter 

Whose clods of clay scatter 
Their cloy o'er the Isle. In this period latter. 
The Isle shall subside with a crash and a groan. 

Then Woman and Man once again sweetly blended. 

Duality ended, — 

Sex wholly transcended — 
Shall merge their twin-Self from the Source first intended 
To flov/ a Finality, One and Alone. 



33 



Speechless 



I have searched the Universe through and through 

For words to tell you, Dear, 
Of the beautiful vision that greets my view 

When you have nestled near. 

I had heard from a poet that roses lent 

Their tint to a woman's cheek, 
So straight to the garden's bloom I went 

The secret there to seek. 

With a trembling hope I softly stooped 

And for the favor plead; 
But the petals fell and the flower drooped — 

The lovely tint had fled. 

Perhaps the lily v/as like your throat 

For thus I had also heard; 
From its fragrant lips might burst some note 

With faint descriptive word. 

But the lily's touch is hard and cold 

And never a bit like yours; 
Its calm, severe, ascetic mould 

Scant sympathy assures. 

Where the limpid waters flowed along 

I sought your scented breath; 
For a maid but echoes their silver song — 

The bard so plainly saith. 

A defiant plash was the answer curt 

Of eddies swirling past. 
If ever they paused 'twas but to flirt — 

Embraced by the sea at last. 

But surely the stars illumed your eyes 

So lovers all agreed; 
And eagerly I scanned the skies — 

My quest was vain indeed, — 

The stars just twinkled and winked and smiled; 

With never a glance so true 
As to make me think of the evenings whiled 

Just looking. Love, at you. 

There is nothing in all God's perfect Plan 

That more than shadows ill 
Her presence who inspires a man 

To feel the lover's thrill. 



34 



And yet, althougli I cannot frame 

The words to speak my thought, 

We two need not a verbal name 
In printed texture wrought. 

For when your throat and cheek caress 
My lips — and linger there; 

And while you whisper low to bless 
Unspeakably; my prayer 

To be more worthy rises mute 

And meets your eyes — and then 

Just you and God and I refute 
The words required of men. 



To Her Who Feels 

A thousand medley sounds may throng a harp. And yet 

It answers not. 
Insulted then they feel a sort of crude regret; 

They wonder what 
Illusive spell has seized the thing, that it should lie 

Inert and dumb 
The while their voices gutturally coarse may cry — 

Whose souls are numb. 

But let a note from any single instrument 

Attuned in pitch 
Approach the harp. Then suddenly the harp has blent 

Its music rich 
In glad response to one wee understanding tone. 

The screeching mob 
Vv/'ithdraw in rough disgust and leave the two alone — 

Whose souls can throb. 

Through many clanging years I seemed to all my friends 

A sullen thing. 
For they, of childish aims and inharmonious ends 

Had failed to bring 
A touch attuned. But you with all your poet's heart 

Once happened near; 
And now I fling my joyous, free, melodious Art 

From sphere to sphere. 

35 



Lei There Be Light 



"Let There Be Light!" The Heaving Void has calmed its inco- 
herent cries and speaks. 

And through the shoreless, soundless seas of space, one world 
upon another creaks 

In huge embroiling effort to obey. Vast waves of anxious ether 
roll 

Tumultuous amid the spectral stars, demanding as their trifling 
toll 

A single glimmer from the cycling spheres — to satisfy the stern 
command 

Of that resounding, thrilling Cosmic Voice, by breath of cease- 
less motion fanned. 

The piercing mandate cleaves dark orbits grim where nebulae 
revolve disturbed 

Lest some blind planet whirling by collide, and thus their onv/ard 
course be curbed; 

Deep echoes vibrate forth the clarion call throughout the awful 
spanless bound 

That forms the realm of unsensed Omnipresence. As the strange 
unheard-of sound 

First strikes relentless on the cumbered ear of atoms, with 
audition dulled — 

From hearing through a million ages past mere rumblings aim- 
less and annulled — 

Each speck of star-dust leaps exulting, wild to realize its dream 
of Light, 

While myriads of mighty molecules have danced ecstatic in 
their flight; 

Stupendous joy commoves the nascent suns from common chaos 
just emerged. 

As through each orb impatient long to shine a pulse of new-born 
power has surged. 

Thus eagerly their energies they bend to halo every mote in 
reach. 

But tardy lags the Light and still no gleam illumes the dismal, 
endless breach. 

Together in a cataclysmic clash — a strain that seems to rupture 
space 

The Universe is tossing back and forth, to find some wee se- 
cluded place 

Where just one ray of light appears afar. The face of ail 
Creation v/eeps 

With torrents teeming mingled hope and fear. A flood of 
sweaty anguish steeps 

36 



In hotter haste and yet more frantic pain the monumental tra- 
vail-throes 

Of Mother Cosmos. Soon the muttering roar of hurtling worlds 
to madness grows 

And swift destruction threatens all that is. But still the black 
eternal Night 

Enshrouding deeper unborn worlds, defies the Voice that bade it 
yield to Light, 

^ :): ^ H: ^ 

"Let There Be Light." A tiny winged thing discerns the crisis 

falling fast — 
Bethinks himself to second God's command. And Lo! effulgent 

breaks at last 
A glory clothing all the mortal race. The Universe sobs glad 

relief. 
And as the chorus swells, I ask the mite his secret. His reply 

comes brief; — 
"There never was a time when Light was not, in spite of theories 

men devise. 
But splendors paled unseen — since God was blind; until forsooth 

I gave Him eyes." 



Hope Ever Shining 

Twisting its way through the stones and the stubble 

Rising unwelcome before it, 
Finds the crude v/orm a world jutting with trouble. 

Since for its keep it must bore it. 

Breasting the breeze, the world's care overthrowing, 
Soars the fleet bird gladly trilling. 

Sees but the beckoning orbs ever glowing. 
Wings its reponse to their thrilling. 



HOPE is a star that transcends our attaining — 

Merged in reality never; 
Shining yet on us some eminence gaining. 

Lighting us upward forever. 

Sloughed in the dark of a light-bereft valley, 
Stumbling and trembling and groping 

Gross mortal minds with their wallowing dally. 
Weighed by the vainness of hoping. 

Heed not their slough or their dubitant story 

Mired in a finite infernal. 
Keep your eye fixed on the visions of glory 

Fulsome from Hope shed eternal. 

37 



The Kiss 

I kissed you first upon the hand — 

A queenly hand; 
The softest one in all the land 

To wield command 
Of human souls that come and go 
When you, My Lady, will it so. 
Permitting adulation's flow 

In granting this 

Admirer's Kiss. 

I kissed you then upon the brow — 

I made a vow 
That if you only would allow 

Me near you now. 
Henceforth I should be at your call 
To guard you. Sister — that is all 
Nor let your charms my heart enthrall. 

Quite safe, I wis. 

That Brother's Kiss. 

I kissed you then upon the cheek — 

You were so meek 
So helpless that I fain would seek — 

And thus bespeak 
Some deeper interest in you, Dear — 
A place where dimples might appear 
In children's cheeks. No need to fear; 

'Twere not amiss — 

A Father's Kiss. 

I kissed you then with tongue on tongue — 

A kiss that stung 
That burned our lips, while Passion wrung 

The plea it flung; 
"Come closer, Love — Love, Love!'' Until 
We felt the wild ecstatic thrill 
Of Heaven's rapture that can fill 

All Hell's abyss — 

The Lover's Kiss. 

I kissed you then upon the breast. 

And in the West 
The sun was setting where the blest 

Abide at rest. 

38 



While o'er my soul the peace that fell 
Transported me to heights where dwell 
The angels, far from mortal spell. 

Love's crowning bliss 

Is Baby's Kiss. 



Both Lover and Friend 

When first my eyes beheld your winsome grace, a host 

Of longings sprung 
Impetuous within my breast to make my boast — 

As bards have sung — 
That I, your lover, might enchant and charm you most. 

For I was young; 
And then it seemed to me that you and I alone 

Were all the world. 
When other suitors pressed to make your love their own 

With hopes unfurled, 
I fain had heard them from the depths of ruin groan 

By envy hurled. 
I clung to you, and fought for you, and prayed that I 

Might crown you queen. 
Exalting you above the Love that broods on high 

I strove to wean 
Your heart away from all your friends. My ceaseless sigh 

To come between. 

But now 'tis not enough to touch your hand and feel 

The lover's thrill; 
And through my raptured being sense the godhood steal 

Ecstatic — fill 
My soul with all the Heaven gods could ask. Your weal; 

Your woman's will; 
Your aspirations; and your soul's success; these need 

A something more 
Than gave a lover blinded by his tender greed 

In days of yore. 
'Mid many lovers let me he a friend. Whose lead 

Above, before. 
You trust and follow to your life's consummate end. 

I thrill with you 
Because our souls' desire is one. And I would lend 

My judgment true. 

So call me Lover, Dear, but more; — esteem me Friend. 
For friends are few. 

39 



A Vision of ff^e Night 

Amid the deep shroud of the dead of the night 

V/hose vestige of light 

Had fled from my sight 
A Vision appeared. And as its form neared 
I saw it was clad in a glistre of white. 

They trembled and twitched — my poor sleep-heavy eyes 

With dread that denies 

The truth it espies, 
And strives to return to lethargy, spurn 
The brilliance to blame for dull torpor's surprise. 

"Sink back to your sleep!" cried the sprites of the West 

Whose blackness confessed 

Their earthiness. "Lest 
To-morrow you shirk your drudgery work 
Since weary and worn and deprived of your rest." 

"Awake and behold!" from the East rang the v/ord 

Of power that stirred 

My senses that heard 
And bade me awake though dawn itself break 
To witness my v/oe for the hours I had erred. 

Still thickly benumbed my slumbered once more; 

But all the earth o'er 

I felt the Light pour 
Its radiance illume the last shade of gloom 
And beckon my spirit forever to soar. 

"O who can you be," I sobbed, "who indeed 

That sightless you lead 

Me on whence proceed 
The rays of the morn; ere dawn can adorn 
The earth and the sky with the sunlight they need?" 

The Vision replied: "My name is not known 

To mortals who moan 

That they must alone 
And lonely observe my outlines, nor swerve 
From things I reveal in the dead of night shown." 

I followed the Light to the crest where it led 

My bruised limbs bled 

I wandered unfed 
Unclothed and unkept by humans who slept 
Interred in their somnolence deep as the dead. 

40 



The work of the morrow I wholly forgot. 

It mattered not what 

Remotely lone spot 
My spirit must seek. Still up loomed the peak 
Attainment that urged me press on, and pause not. 

At last the bleak summit I reached weak and worn 

With vesture all torn. 

I heard my friends mourn 
Below in the vale. Where, drowsily pale 
They clung to what I ^be crowned must he shorn. 

Then — wonder of wonders — forever away 
Earth's night passed. Broad day 
Revealed an array 
Of glories that I ne'er saw in the sky 
While I below lingered to work or to play. 



The Vision had faded. But still brighter yet 

Above my regret 

My raptured sight met 
A message from God. "Until you had trod 
The heights of abandonment, suns must all set." 

"The Vision you saw was a foregleam I cast 

O'er present and past 

That flickering fast 
Souls see who aspire. Come higher, come higher! 
Forget your Soul's dawn. Lo, the sun shines at last." 



A Sure Remedy 

Tve a secret. Dear, to tell you. 

Cross my heart, I tell you true. 
And I hope it may impel you 

Just to watch it work for you. 
Now's the very time to try it — 

Now and always after this; 
Then if you would like to buy it 

You can pay me with a kiss. 

When a fear or doubt or worry 

Comes to bother you again 
Till your brain's all fret and flurry; 

Don't you ask advice of men. 
Don't you wonder what's the reason, 

But before the clock says "tick" — 
Here's the secret right in season, 

Just you love somebody — quick. 

41 



On/y a Worm 



"Only a worm!" — exclaimed the man 

As he crushed the mite in the Maker's Plan. 

But eons hence must the man atone; 

For lo the worm to a god full-grown 

Shall teach the man, at Judgment Day 

That Life is one, and 'tis Self we slay. 



42 



Humanity's Prisoners 



Angrily foreboding, with a sullen snarl that tells 

How a heart ferocious through the growling mutter swells; 

Gnashing on his jagged teeth in mighty rage unkempt; 

Lashing bristling tail from which no object seems exempt; 

Swaying tawny body like a tower in a storm; 

Hate and lust exhaling from his gaunt and hungry form; 

Circles mountain Lion in his artificial den. 

Pouring out his loathing on the gaping sons of men. 

Lordly in the forest, here he froths at ironed shame 

Impotently panting for the freedom whence he came. 

Pitifully beating eager wings against the bars — 
Frenziedly unmindful of the smarting wounds whose scars 
Add to one another deeper witness to the crime 
Where a cage discordant robs the woodland's choral chime; 
Pale and sick and sorrowful, a Birdling plaintive peeps. 
Pleading with a restlessness that never lulls nor sleeps; 
Hoping spite of vanished hopes to reach again the nest 
Whence a man marauder snatched this childie from the rest. 
All the tender sweetness long ago has left her voice. 
Now the note of sobbing is the songster's only choice. 

Massively inert, cowed dumb, all powerless there lies 

Caged as yet a mighty force that passers-by despise. 

In the brain of man a fettered Mind awaits the day 

When that jailer Ignorance shall die and yield his sway. 

In the human heart confined a bird is pining too 

Known as Love — her jailer Fear. She pleads with me and yon. 

Who will break the cruel thrall and set the prisoners free; 
Then discern what their Creator meant the two to be? 



43 



The Sml of a Fhxvet 



A tulip and a violet were growiiig side by side. 
The violet lay lowly. But the tulip flaunted wide 
Her coarse plebeian petals that, coquetting with the sun. 
Compelled a heightened color at the notice she had won 
Through beauty's dower. 

A maiden passed along that way, in search of fragrant bloom. 
A little maid of charity — she helped to cheer the gloom 
Of dreary army hospitals where dying soldiers lay, 
Tormented with the memories of men they strove to slay 
By brutish power. 

Not once a single glance gave she to charms of tulip bold. 
But tenderly she felt among the tangled moss and mold 
To where the little violet was hiding — all unseen. 
While pouring forth her perfume with her wonted modest mien, 
Bach hour by hour. 

Her body bruised and broken, soon the violet lay dead 
Within the maiden's grasp. And then the brilliant tulip said, 
"You foolish little flower, it is plain as plain can be 
That you should have asserted more of self. Just look at me — 
I never cower." 

The tulip hung there till it rotted on its withered stem. 

The dying soldiers smiled — while souls of violets wafted them 

To realms where waves of fragrance out from God's own presence 

roll. 
For the petal is the body, but the perfume is the soul 
Of every flower. 



44 



Missing the Mark 



The master bowman wings his arrows true. 

His matchless skill 
Had pierced the finest target through and through 

Transfixed at will. 
But let the sun withdraw its limpid light; 

Let shadows fall 
That swiftly merge in gloom the nascent night 

Till black the pall 
Of total darkness wraps the earth in shroud; 

No archer then 
Can lift from off his arms the cumbrous cloud 

Whose burden men 
Must bear until another dawning day. 

If now his bow 
He turn and twang toward what had been his prey 

The shaft falls low 
And wide the mark; for Night has clutched his hand. 

Obscured the goal, 
And made the master marksman lose command 

Of skill's control. 

So likewise fails at times the Soul of us 

Its prize to win. 
When mental midnight clouds its action thus, 

We call it sin. 
But sin is merely missing some one mark 

The Soul has set. 
And that because there broods yon shadow dark; 

Then why regret? 
For just as men must tread the cycle round 

Of dusk and dawn 
Before the Timeless have their efforts crowned 

Of brain and brawn; 
So night and day must ever alternate 

With sure return 
Upon the Soul that aims at lofty Fate 

Some boon to earn. 
Rebuke you not — if once your aim have failed; 

By sin depressed; 
But, — till your knowledge-dawn shall have prevailed 

Lie still, and rest. 



45 



The Self-Accusing Verdict 

The painting was fearlessly bare of a film of a robe to enmesh 
In shamed obscurement the curves of her form or the tints of 

her flesh. 
Her bosom, her cheek and her limbs were so rounded and whole- 
some and sweet 
That taken together the charms of all Womanhood scarce could 

compete. 
The truth was portrayed from arcana most sacred vouchsafed to 

the race — 
Divinity shone from the ground at her feet to the crown o'er her 

face. 
The multitude passing pronounced its opinion in tones that I 

heard 
With emphasis challenging, spite of the fact that they said not 

a word. 

"How shameful!" declared a lean spinster, her visage bespeaking 

the prude, 
"To show to the public a figure so wantonly, shamelessly nude. 
I sigh for my sex that a creature thus brazen, immoral and bold 
Should pose in impurity's nakedness, waiting for men to behold. 
'Tis wicked to gaze on a sight so unclothed, so unchaste, so 

unclean; 
I flee from a vision whose outlines defile and pollute and be- 

mean." 

"How luscious!" he cried with the full-orbed perceptions, the 
passion of youth 

That sensed the mere form but evaded the essence and spirit of 
Truth. 

"My blood rises hot — and my manhood leaps up and my heart is 
on fire 

To clasp to my breast and to thrill, through and through, the 
fair maid I desire. 

For woman was meant but to satisfy wholly my manhood's de- 
mand — 

Oh, that she might spring from the canvas and follow the lead 
of my hand." 

Two lovers passed by. They were husband and wife, yet 

avowed lovers still. 
They looked at the form standing mute with its judgment. A 

great divine thrill 
Of soul-understanding united them both in a thought that spoke 

not. 

46 



All words are but shadows. Which falling must hide and dis- 
figure and blot 

The soul that looks sunward. They knew what it was to sense 
passion — and yet 

Their love was so pure that its fullest expression left not one 
regret. 

Amid the dumb multitude lazing along with a somnolent nod. 

Illumined these two murmured low in one whisper, "The Image 
of God." 



Fulfilling tl^e Great Command 

A thousand priests may creep their painful way to distant gilded 
shrine 
To venerate a sacred bone; — 
And God can scarce withhold reproving frown. A blasphemous 
design — 
By marrow-wasting to atone. 

A band of thoughtless zealots labeled Christ may vainly proselyte 

A race of totem-minded blacks; — 
And God but weeps in pity that His servants hypnotized by fright 

Ecstatic, self-deluded wax. 

A little child may fling a careless drop of water on a rose 

Just budding into gracious bloom; — 
And God transported in a wave of joy His presence sweet bestows 

Through every petal's fresh perfume. 

For lo, the God of countless planets sleeping in the flower abides 

Until full-blown the fragrance wakes. 
The "Logos" is but Self-expression. He obeys who, where God 
hides. 

With Christlike touch the casement breaks. 



47 



Retuzn to Nature 

"Return to Nature." 'Tis a graceful phrase 
But signifying little in the saying 
Until we thread the deep, perplexing maze 
That Naturism seems to be displaying. 

To bare a body naked to the sun; 

To live upon the rudiment essentials; 

To eat and sleep and die the while you shun 

Refinement with her gentle consequentials; 

To forage for a bit of tardy food; 

And then to win it only by a battle; 

To watch your footsteps lest their crunch intrude 

And hostile missiles somewhence rudely rattle; 

To prowl about and scurry fleet away 

In terror lest you be with spoils detected; 

To sulk and growl and rage the livelong day 

When earnest effort fails since misdirected; 

To keep a ferret vigilance on foes; 

To face exposed the most ferocious weather; 

To share with none your pleasures or your woes; 

To seek in vain scant cover from the heather; 

To have no home but where you skulk at night; 

To own no ties you may not roughly sever; 

To crouch at every sound from out the light; 

To drag a restless, aimless life forever; 

To wander here and there with none to care; 

To stretch a shaggy limb upon the mountain; 

To wallow in a cold, uncanny lair; 

To lap with lurid tongue from forest fountain; 

To feel that you exist for you alone; 

To live upon your prey, perforce made selfish; 

To champion no cause but just your own; 

To hide in hermit haunt till fairly elfish; 

To know your dormant soul though sprung from God 

Is choked and dumb for lack of true expression; 

To grunt and growl and nose amid the sod 

The while your hungry heart demands progression; 

To browse upon the stubble near the earth 

For food whereby your body may be nourished, 

Unconscious that the husk at seedling's birth 

Involved a Something whence your soul has flourished; 

To lead in short a desultory life 

With sun and shadow, joy and sorrow blended 

Perhaps in peace, perhaps in bloody strife 

48 



Till savage Death has all your struggles ended; 

To be but one among the countless horde 

Of vulgar beings unevolved for ages; 

To halt content while others hasten toward 

The Honor Roll in Michael's glistening pages; — 

Is (/its Return to Nature? If it be 

We imitate the traits of brutes most bestial 

And retrograde throughout Eternity. 

For even beasts are facing heights celestial. 



To roam at will the fragrant, flowering fields; 

To nestle near the tender dear Earth Mother; 

To care for no protection if it shields 

By sacrificing some less able brother; 

To eat the luscious fruit the fields supply 

Or eat it not, — in lack or fulness wealthy; 

To scorn the drug, the knife, the occult eye, 

From but the dew's elixir springing healthy; 

To welcome forms divinely bare — and yet 

To prize the lace a lovely arm adorning; 

To watch the shadows fall without regret; 

To greet the splendid sunrise every morning; 

To draw a rythmic, calm, refreshing breath; 

To revel in a solitude quite soundless; 

To know no fear, not even that of Death; 

To claim as yours by right possessions boundless; 

To let the breezes kiss responsive flesh; 

To range abroad supreme in your dominion; 

To cast the last externals that enmesh; 

To gambol free of popular opinion; 

To make no marriage save your love impel; 

To hold aloof from clannish, family feeling; 

To bear no child but that desired full well; 

To need no counsel to your Soul's revealing; 

To act on impulse, reckless of result; 

To trust the ready instinct that imbues yo^; 

To glory in your freedom and exult 

To court Desire whose prescient hopes enthuse you; 

To ridicule dependence on a friend; 

To seek no mystic doctor, lawyer, preacher; 

To lord the heights of Selfhood you ascend; 

to make the starry firmament your teacher; 

To laugh at laws and penalties for crime; 

To scratch the statutes off the earth, save only 

That single mandate with its sense sublime 

49 



"To thine own Self be true," — and dare be lonely; 

To know that education means unfold; 

To break instinctively whatever fetters; 

To face tradition's dictum, calmly bold; 

To study laws of life — not laws of letters; 

To honor Nature's cause in happy hymns; 

To realize that Nature is the raiment 

Wherein the God of Nature robes His limbs; 

To laud as Deity no counter-claimant; 

To act and think and feel and be all true; 

To vote with Love, in lawless legislature; 

To cherish worlds, since worlds abide in you; — 

We could perhaps call this Return to Nature. 

But vastly most important of the whole 

Wherein I have but named some single feature 

Is that you recognize the subtle Soul 

That animates and guides each living creature. 

It matters little what you call the Thing — 

Volition, Instinct, Conscience, Judgment, Longing, 

It matters much how earnestly you cling 

To those desires which with the Thing come thronging. 

For this may sum the argument entire; — 

The animals obey their Souls^ monition. 

Escaping Its divinely righteous ire 

That blights so much of human-hoped fruition. 

No method, system, school, or cult, or cree(^ 
Need hamper you with fetish nomenclature; 
To he yourself f-and let your godhood lead- 
Herein, I wean, is true Return to Nature. 



Environment 

From out the blackest, grossest earth 
The fairest flower may flourish. 

Her seed evolved her own pure birth — 
The clods but scantly nourish. 

Within a sin-soiled world, I stood 
Uncertain of my sweetness 

Till, as a flower, I drew the good 
From even sin's completeness. 



50 



The Marriage of God and Nature 

When relatives meddlesome come interfering 

'Twixt husband and wife there is apt to be strife; 
Till ugly Divorce in its envy appearing 

Has torn them apart for the rest of their life. 
When husband and wife are alone with each other, 

A thousand times closer entwines the soft bond 
That makes the two one, with no room for another — 

The bond of Desire unites them more fond. 

A billion years since, Father God went a-wooing; 

'Twas ages before this race human was born. 
He wooed Mother Nature — nor wearied pursuing 

Until She said "Yes" on their bright wedding morn. 
The child that first blessed them we know as Creation 

And from her matured, all we mortals have sprung; 
And of her immortal in manifestation 

Of her immemorial poets have sung. 

Now God has a friend that is surnamed Religion 

Who strives to tear God from dear Nature apart; 
And threatens damnation with penalties Stygian 

In order to terrify God's human heart. 
Then sweet Mother Nature knows some one called Science 

Who alienates Her from endearments of God, 
And begs Her to place a more certain reliance 

Upon the grim skeletons dug from the sod. 

And so God and Nature though longing to weld them 
In tenderest union; while heart with heart throbs; 

Are sundered — so long have outsiders withheld them 

And robbed them of rapture; while heart from heart sobs. 

Their daughter Creation is anxiously weeping 

That Nature and God have been rent into twain. 

While we with our sympathies stunted and sleeping. 

Seek churches and books. But our quest is in vain. 



O blinded Humanity, can a babe issue 

From womb of its mother or loins of its sire 
Save only the bone and the blood and the tissue 

Be formed by uniting the parents' desire? 
So call not God impotent, — Mind analytic, 

The while you hold Nature from God's dear embrace; 
If Nature be sterile, — Oh Spiritist critic. 

You need but give God His original place. 

51 



Her Answer 

I sent my Love a spray of bloom 

And begged her wear just one 
To seal my happiness, or doom 

With a rose in her hair — or none. 

I sped that night to the festal hall 
To watch for the maiden fair; 

Then over my heart there fell a pall — 
Her tresses were coldly bare. 

But while I looked there flamed afire 

The token I fain would seek; 
For the rose that answered my heart's desire 

Had blossomed in her cheek. 



52 



Virgin Gold 



Deep in the heart of the mountain there lay 

Modestly, shyly in hiding 
Nuggets of gold — virgin gold. Till one day 

Miners disturbed their abiding. 

All the bright nuggets forthwith they displaced, 

Melted them up in a mixture; 
Copper and nickel in coin that they chased — 

Bases to give the gold fixture. 

One bit they saved as a pure souvenir, 

Put it where hands could not tarnish; 

Mounted in setting whose charms would endear 
With an appropriate garnish. 

Moulded in money 'twould pass as mere coin 
Coarsened through process of minting; 

Gold in virginity never may join 

Throngs harshly clutching and stinting. 



Souls that the world with the wear of its care 

Worries away prematurely — 
There are the spirits most spotlessly fair. 

Wrought the most finely and purely. 

You, with your practical base of alloy, 
Coin of a race roughly fingered. 

Circulate still with the clink of your cloy. 
Calloused, your spirit has lingered. 

But if your brother lose heart and pass out. 
Sensitive soul that soars higher. 

Torture him not with derision or doubt — 
Past is his crucible fire. 



53 



The Pursuit of Pleasure 



Through the green meadows I wandered one day 

Wandered away 

Child — in my play, 
Seeking the gold of the rainbow so gay; 

Seeking but finding it fleeting. 



Out from the flowers a fairy arose — 

Every child knows 

Where a child goes 
When it needs Fairyland's balm for its woes — 

There came we two to be meeting. 

Softly I whispered and asked her her name. 

"So you just came? 

Wide is my fame. 
Pleasure they call me — and rapture my aim. 

Would you love life? Only follow." 

Gleefully grasping the hand of my guide 

Proud at her side 

Proud in my stride 
Gladly I followed. But soon I espied 

Meadow depressed into hollow. 

Into the valley of misty Despair, 

Tottering where 

Lust laid its lair 
Pleasure allured me — made my soul bear 

Tortures devised of the devil. 

Pleasure deserted me. Pleasure cared not 

How black the spot 

Hellishly hot 
Where my heart sank, with a moan that its lot 

Lay where this Pleasure wrought revel. 

Hopless I floundered and writhed and cried out; — 

Groan and yet shout; 

"Hedge me about 
Doom me and damn me! But leave me, O Doubt, 

Save me or slay me — one quickly." 



54 



Shrieking in torture my prayer to be saved 

While still I raved 

Gently there waved 
Down from the heights the salvation I craved — 

Cards woven strongly and thickly. 

Some hidden hand held the life-saving line. 

Paying it fine. 

Strength newly mine, 
Up till I drank once again Life's sweet wine 

Climbed I with grasp sure and steady. 

Ah, but the vision that met my glad eyes 

Held a surprise 

Reason denies; 
How many facts that our reason defies 

Seem to astound us made ready. 

For on the summit stood Pleasure, arrayed 

Not for the shade — 

Lest the tints fade; 
Splendor celestial about her displayed 

Made me exclaim in wide wonder. 

"Truly I led you," she said with a kiss, 

"Led you amiss. 

You who sought bliss 
All the while led you that you might seek this 

Summit where mortal hopes sunder. 

Deep in the gloom and the dead of the night 

Robbed of my sight. 

Crazed by my fright, 
Cried I aloft for a glimmer of light. 

Then and then only ascended. 

When men would follow, they needs must face Hell; 

Ah, I know well 

Hell's human spell — 
But if you climb to the heights where I dwell. 

Heaven and I, lo, are blended." 



55 



Mothering Souls 



A virgin mother suffers more than man 

Can ever comprehend. His mental span 

Is limited to cold experience — - 

To sense a soul his brain is far too dense. 

And yet to man the very synonym 

For agony is that which seems to him 

An unexplainable and mystic thing; 

To even his dull eyes her sorrows bring 

The tears of sympathy beyond control 

That steal unbid from out his inmost soul. 

The mother weighed in travail does but jest 

Beside the enciente Soul within whose breast 

Lies hope of unborn babe begot from God. 

Since men so little know where God has trod, 

More often they confound His greatest act 

With Satan's power, by all their creeds attacked. 

No earthly laws will ever legalize 

To earthless Soul a spouse beyond the skies. 

If they consort above the pale of sex 

A child, or man, or patriarch, who recks 

Of naught but that the Spirit broods above 

May bear on earth a god conceived of Love. 

Nor time nor place nor circumstance prevents 

The union of the Soul with Spirit; whence 

A second Christ in flesh or print or stone 

Shall burst Immaculate, whom God must own. 

The Spirit — whether He or She or It 

Forever wooes the Soul. Endearments flit 

Along the sea of ether, on whose waves 

Must navigate the human ere he braves 

And dominates at last the Boundless All. 

A million souls detect the whisper fall 

Wherein the Limitless conceals Its voice. 

Though every one if left to honest choice 

Would mate with Spirit only, still the fear 

Of men and laws and customs must appear — - 

An interloper snatching heart from heart. 

To keep our dear divinities apart. 

As lovers innocent of any wrong 

May twine their raptured forms, since both belong 

To one another and to Love, just so 

When sympathy and impulse freely flow 

The Spirit and the Soul commune as one; 

56 



And if they have not sadly learned to shun 

The soft caress of those who thrill akin, 

A babe is born. 'Tis God's — though men see sin. 

O, Soul, if such you be, whose longings yearn 

To mother all the Universe, then learn 

That in your Spirit Lover lies the strength 

To bear and buoy and cheer you any length 

Whereto your travail labors. God perceives 

Those law-abiding fools whose speech relieves 

Themselves of undue pressure on the brain. 

But God will not permit their curse to stain 

The nascent Christ that struggles while you groan 

And suffer in the night-time all alone. 

So bear you hard upon the Spirit's arm. 

Embraced thereby you nestle free from harm. 

If ever tears would blur your downcast eye 

Look on and up. And soon the Great Most High 

Shall smile upon you. Mother Soul, to crown 

Your pangs through wondrous Child of world-renown. 



^5 A Flower 

Does the flower question whence it came? 

No more do I. 
Fragrance pours profuse to waft it fame 

That cannot die. 

Years may pass — and still the perfume clings 

To withered rose. 
Eons flit — and still my spirit sings 

Though flesh repose. 



57 



Two Views of Death 

A sloughing of a shrunken shell; 
A blasting of the hopes that dwell 

Within the human breast; 
A rending of these mortal ties 
By some fierce God beyond the skies, 

Whose ire is thus confessed; 
A memory that brands red-hot 
Our lives recorded blot by blot; 

An ashen-charred regret; 
A throttling clutch upon the throat; 
A band of leering fiends that gloat 

Their molten snares to set; 
A sigh — a moan — a gasp — a groan; 
A writhing anguish all alone 

With none to soothe the pain; 
A blinding flood of bitter tears 
To bury all that Life endears 

Beneath their torrents vain. 
A gaunt-eyed throng of weeping friends 
Who shriek as Fate's keen stroke descends 

And strive to stay the blow; 
A stillness as of endless sleep; 
A horde of famished worms that creep 

To wreak their crunching woe; 
A torment far too deep for speech 
In yawning Hell's relentless breach — 

Since thus the Preacher saith; 
A damning of a spirit lost 
On shoreless seas of brimstone tossed; — 

And this to inen is Death. 



A dofiing of an outgrown robe 

That clothed the Soul whose earth-abode 

Must house it for a time; 
A childlike slumber, painless, sweet. 
While just before rare visions greet 

And voice high Heaven's chime; 
A world 'tis best to do without 
And leave it to its dread and doubt — 

Its merely mortal mind; 
A mob of foolish persons bent 
On trickling tears of discontent 

Till all their views are blind; 



5S 



A blasphemous black mourning rite 
While through a superhuman light 

Flits he for whom they mourn; 
A ceremony thick with shrouds 
While he is smiling through the clouds 

Of whom they think them shorn; 
Long prayers of penance for the dead; 
And tears upon his grave, long shed — 

The dead who lives, now first; — 
As wise to grieve for butterfly 
Which as a grub must seem to die 

Before its beauty burst; — 
A spirit crushed by mortal men. 
Whose nobleness surpassed their ken 

Expanded full at last; 
A lien on all Eternity; 
Horizon-hope whence one may see 

The Time-disfigured Past; 
A Soul unthralled and left to choose 
What next integument to use 

To compass swifter growth; 
A vast domain as free as air, 
Unflecked by fear or grief or care 

With minions never loath; 
An entrance into fuller Life 
Where Love for hate and Peace for strife 

Yields Happiness unmixed; 
Progression based on Heaven's hints 
With power to conquer Cosmos, since 

No destiny is fixed; 
A goal at which the sunrise quails, 
A couch by which the sunset pales, 

A splendor unforetold; 
Communion with those spirits who 
Attuned on earth their ear to you 

The Self of you to hold; 
A brotherhood of stars and suns 
Whose love supports the weaker ones 

Until the least grow great; 
A kingship with the Lord of All — 
Of winged host and worms that crawl; 

Full mastery of Fate; 



59 



The Heaven promised every race 
Upon this earth's full-featured face 

Condensed in one great joy; 
But all the crudities cut off 
Whereat men had a right to scoff — 

A Heaven without alloy; 
A power quelling ocean's storm 
And yet as light as rose's form 

And pure as lily's breath; 
Solution in a blossomed Soul 
For problems human buds enroll; — 

And this to God is Death, 



A Bit of Crepe 



A bit of crepe upon the door 

And nothing more; 
But oh the woe that lurks behind! 
To stab the heart and shroud the mind. 
Attacking hosts of humankind 

Whose tears outpour. 

A bit of hope within the heart; 

Then woes depart. 
The clouds that frowned across the sky 
Have rolled away. And from on high 
The heart of Heaven draweth night 

Whence sunbeams dart. 

A bit of love to light the soul; 

Let shadows roll 
As dense as forest wraithed in shade. 
Lo! even ere the shadow fade 
Some sunrise glory is displayed 

To clear the Whole. 



60 



Sunset on the River 

In a lovely land of hills 

Flows a stream whose life instils 

From its surging hillside rills 

Rapture — and with reason. 
For while night is settling low 
O'er the waters' mirrored flow. 
Sunset splendors come and go 

In the autumn season. 

Clear in placid pools there lie 
Blendings rich of earth and sky; 
Earth on shore and sun on high 

Meet in mystic mingling. 
Radiant hues of autumn leaf 
Nature's ripened golden sheaf 
Stretched in wondrous, rare relief. 

Thrill our senses tingling. 

Sunshine glints athwart the shade; 
Heaven's beauties are displayed 
Ere the suns of winter fade 

And the sad pines shiver. 
Vista vivid lends the stream 
Backward glow with onward gleam. 
Calm supernal, hope supreme — 

Sunset on the River. 



When the sun descends at last 
On my Soul's unruffled past, 
May the prospect be as vast. 

Shedding equal glory. 
May I rest as calm and clear; 
Thus reflect when night draws near 
Foregleams from a higher sphere 

O'er my life's pure story. 



61 



Love IS God 

A woman had taken a loaf from another, 

Not begging but stealing. 
The woman was penniless. She was a mother; 

About her were kneeling 
And starving and crying for one crust of bread 
Her gaunt, pinched children that must have lain dead 
But for this bare morsel. Since Law she defied 
Her sentence was lawful. Yet still her soul cri<^d; — 

"I loved them so dearly! 

The need of them nearly 

Put me in the sod. 

And is not Love God?" 

A virgin no longer a virgin lay weeping 

And throbbing and twinging. 
The man who had wooed her sweet body slunk creeping 

And halting and cringing. 
The world cried "Dishonored," condemning them both. 
Her father impanelling jurists on oath 
Declared it a crime for two lovers to love. 
Then Truth — my heart heard her — proclaimed from above;- 

"Blasphemers, cease blaming 

These lovers! enshaming 

Them scourged of Law's rod. 

Love truly is God." 

A soul so illumined it broke every fetter 

Whose cruelly binding 
Enshacklement crushed it; saw farther and better 

Relieved of creed's blinding. 
Expanding beyond the sectarian thrall. 
Its personal God was the Good in us all. 
But churchmen were shocked at this atheist's views. 
Expelled him from worship their Man-God might lose. 

"Ye churchlings debasing; 

In vain your effacing 

Of heights I have trod. 

I — loving, am God." 



62 



God in Sin 

A huge unsightly mass of blackness loomed 

Athwart the sky. 
So frowning that the children scarce presumed 

To pass it by. 
Through many weary months it grew and grew 

Though none saw how. 
The shroud upon its surface hid its view, 

Hid then— ^not now; 
For finally the work, declared complete 

Was all unveiled. 
Before the form mens' eyes were bid to greet 

Their dreams had paled; — 
A golden statute, smiling, wooing, stood 

Imbued with grace 
Revealing, when it shed its dismal hood, 

A human face. 
The children clapped their hands. They gathered near, 

Nor felt afraid — 
Since features like their own their foolish fear 

Had quite allayed. 

The veil called Sin encloses roundabout 

This human kind. 
Beholding but the pall cast on without, 

Our childish mind 
Would shudder at the shroud. And flee the sight 

That mortal men 
Despoil of good. But when exposed to light 

The likeness then 
Of God Himself shall burst upon our eyes. 

To God akin 
Some souls already — prematurely wise, 

See God in Sin. 



63 



Poets Piieons 

You call me a poet. Sometimes a faint gleam 

Of truth you discern through the rhyme you esteem. 

But ah you know not, nor ever can dream 

What anguish I suffer. 

My soul sobs asunder; 

So deep pinioned under 

Man's crass gilded plunder, 

I seem but a buffer 
Between a world struggling and shackles supreme. 

A bit of embellishment verbally wrought 

From out my heart's texture, with pangs dearly bought. 

You judge by its rhythm. The longings that sought 

Therein some expression 

You pass all unwitting. 

Mere phantoms they flitting 

Beyond your brows knitting 

But mark your confession 
That you cannot feel — as a free spirit ought. 

None knows but a poet, an artist, a bard. 

The sorrows that doom the race, griping it hard. 

The wounds fresh and bleeding, the wounds old and scarred, 

They cut the flesh tender 

Of humans to teach them 

Why woes must impeach them 

And ruin still reach them 

Their reason to render, 
Till men learn the causes of grief to regard. 
The waif in the gutter, — the king on his throne, 
The populace herding, — the hermit alone. 
The patriarch dying, — the babe yet ungrown. 

They all have their sorrow. 

But still they all share it 

With him who will bear it 

Unflinching, and wear it 

A shroud he must borrow — 
Vicarious sufferer — born to atone. 

The tiniest life in the world that feels pain 
Impresses my heart, nor impresses in vain. 
At times with the woes of the world sent insane 



64 



I rack me with sobbing. 
Sad sympathies crowding, 
Unkindnesses clouding. 
Forebodings enshrouding. 
Possess my brain throbbing 
And all of its energies sap till they drain. 



Ah, envy me not the ephemeral fame 
Attaching its wreath to a poet's brief name. 
If you were to suffer in measure the same 

Lo, fame would not flourish. 

No man Messianic 

But felt some Titanic 

Heart-throe. Some oceanic 

Grief -tide; whose depths nourish 
The frail plant of poesy, whence these blooms came. 



Stream and Source 

With laughing swirl and playful whirl 

And cataract resounding 
The storied Rhine delights to shine. 

Along its banks abounding 
Sweet verdure springs whose fragrance flings 

Far up and dov/n the valley; 
Till weary men are tempted then 

Within its realm to dally. 
The River Song just flows along 

As if 'twere born to babble 
Its brimming glee to you and me 

While by its brink we dabble. 
Yet first it flows whence no one knows 

Amid the Alpine mountains; 
A thousand brooks from lofty nooks 

Have swelled its ceaseless fountains. 

4: 4: ^ 4: 4( 

That songful Soul whose deeds may roll 

For human fructifying 
Has hid alone on heights unknown 

Above all mortal spying. 



65 



The Flower of Woman's Lo<^e 

In a hothouse all protected 

Where surroundings were directed 
By the tender, wise attention of a floriculturist; 

Once a violet was growing 

Through his thoughtful care bestowing 
Such a gracious, sweet perfume upon the atmosphere she kissed. 

If there wandered hy a worry. 

All the garden in a flurry 
Just pulled to its glass enclosure, shutting interlopers out. 

Not a boisterous wind could harry 

Or a chilly hailstone tarry 
Where a home so providential reared its fortress roundabout. 

But the gardener once while making 

Extra haste, his care forsaking 
Left a cruel piece of timber lying on the violet. 

And the shadow crushed the flower 

Closer cringing hour by hour 
Till her heart lay cold and dying when the evening sun had set. 



In a woodland wild and lonely 

Where the forest monarchs only 
Were preserving haughty vigilance upon the rugged slope, 

There matured somewhat tardy 

Struggling with her neighbors hardy 
Still another little violet. But she must bravely grope 

Through a tangled mass forbidding. 

Where the weeds would fain be ridding 
Their uncouth and lawless conclaves from a presence chiding fair. 

So her angry neighbors bristled 

While the winds more ruthless whistled 
While the chilly blasts of Boreas thus flung their spiteful share 

Toward the flower's persecution. 

Every hour's revolution 
Seemed to fasten on her being still another cruel clutch. 

But the wondrous flower flourished. 

For a loving sunbeam nourished 
And empowered her to blossom by his sympathetic touch. 



There exists a budding fragrance 
In a spot where Nature's vagrance 
May not penetrate to rob it of its tender virgin heart. 

66 



In the bosom of a maiden 
By her mother-breasts o'erladen 
There abides a flower nascent — Woman's Love — that hides apart. 

You may place here where surrounding 

Tempest shocks are fierce resounding 
And the barren earth exhales a blighting poverty of growth; 

Or the struggle with her neighbors 

For the fruits of all her labors 
Would compel a stronger creature to forsake the battle, loath. 

Let the cruel blasts of sorrow 

Cloud the day and shroud the morrow; 
Let the Universe unite to crush the fragile flower's life; 

If you smile upon her — tender 

That is all she needs to lend her 
Such a superhuman sweetness as illumes a loving wife. 



A Rainbow Smile 

High in his chariot gleaming like gold 
Pompously proud and commanding 

Glories the Sun. But we cannot behold 
Splendors past our understanding. 

Gently unveiling her sweet laughing face 

Rare as a shy four-leaf clover, 
Glances the Rainbow. We haste to the place 

Wait till her last smile is over. 



Every-day cheer on the faces of men 

Lightens our way; still less sweetly 
As when the tears fall in torrents — and then 
Smiles come to banish completely. 



67 



Measure Me an Hour 

"Measure me an hour," 

I bade a tortoise sprawling 
Sluggish, churlish, sour. 

Where Earth's great tears are falling. 
Not the barest nod 

Vouchsafed the clumsy creature; 
Clammy as a clod 

Lay listless every feature. 
When the hour was past, 

I found the logy turtle 
Senseless — sleeping fast. 

A thousand storms might hurtle; 
Avalanches pour; 

The elements commingle; 
Cataclysms roar; 

And through all not a single 
Sound disturbs the brute, 

Inert, inane, inutile; 
Time's intense pursuit 

Falls short, forever futile. 

"Measure me an hour," 

I bade an ant whose eager 
Consciousness of power 

Would any sloth beleaguer. 
Straining every limb — 

Abristle with ambition — 
Cheery still, the glim 

Of joy illumes her mission. 
Scarce the tenth had sped 

Of this the hour expected 
When I saw ahead 

An army close collected; 
Ants of every size 

And strength and stride and muscle; 
Bearing each a prize 

For which the fiercest tussle 
Made the creatures groan — 

The weight was so oppressive. 
Proudly led alone 

My ant the host aggressive. 

Chronometric name 

3y human computation 
Fixed both hours the same. 

68 



And yet complete cessation 
Marked the course of one — 

If acts be worth computing; 
While its span was run 

A life was but imbruting. 
Through the second space 

An army was advancing 
Swift from place to place, 

Its revenues enhancing. 



Figures on a clock 

Are fallacies deceiving 
With their clanging shock 

That toll the minutes leaving. 
Time is framed within 

The heart whose rare attaining 
Makes a mortal win 

In spite of dial's feigning. 



Renunciation 

The maid was wondrous fair in face and limb. 

And as he looked, her beauty thrilling him 

Sent passion surging like a tidal wave 

Throughout his frame — a wave he dared not brave. 

He looked again. He gasped. He hid his eyes. 

He pursed his pious lips — ah, he was wise — 

Renounced the carnal pulse. Renounce he must — 

Saint Anthony — himself he could not ti-ust. 
* * * * * 

A sinner passed, his soul so sensitive 
That every form of beauty seemed to give 
A pang of longing, that he might translate 
The passion of the souls that must create. 
He too discerned the maid. But stooping down 
He gently touched her cheek — her virtue's crown — 
Then whispered, "Dear, I love you far too well 
To press you close, and spoil your virgin's spell." 



69 



Love and tiie Lark 

A lark once flitted beside my door 

And I bade the lark come in; 
But though I beckoned her o'er and o'er 

She was none of my kind or kin. 

So I ceased my importuning quite 

And I looked the other way; 
When she sought my arm — this warbling wight- 

And settled as if to stay. 

The silver song from her crested throat 

Entranced my listening ear. 
While sped its melody far remote 

To burst on a distant sphere. 

Desirous then of possessing her 

I touched her tender wing. 
With a little flutter and frightened stir 

The birdling ceased to sing; 

Her voice with terror first grew hoarse. 
Then mute with fear and dread. 

Till back she flew on her airy course — 
Forever my longings fled. 



Oh Love is a lark with the sweetest song 

That ever a mortal heard; 
Yet you cannot sunwnon her till she long 

To sing as a soaring bird. 

And when she nestles your human heart 

'Twere best to notice not, 
But just enjoy; while her songs impart 

Their thrill. Lest she leave the spot. 



70 



Through Psychic io Mystic 



My brain is another's 

Now foe's and now brother's 
But never my own for a set space of time; 

For through it are rushing 

And clashing and crushing 
The thoughts of the world that make me but a mime. 

The shadows that haunt me, 

The spectres that taunt me, 
The demons that leer with a lurid red eye. 

The fetters that thrall me. 

The fears that appall me; 
Belong to the train of some spirit swept by. 

He leaves them behind him — 
These objects that bind him. 

And flees while he frees his chilled flesh from their touch- 
But fleeing he leaves them 
For one who receives them 

Lethargic — though wild to escape from their clutch. 

What maddening devils 

Cavort in their revels 
Upon by brain feverish — bursting — on fire; 

My maudlin mind mooning 

And drooning and swooning 
Goes out as the gust of a futile desire. 

The graves of creation 

Entombing damnation 
Have lifted their lids till their stench turns me sick. 

With foulnessess streaking 

Their vapors rise reeking 
Of vices and villainies noisomely thick. 

On yon remote border 

Of civilized order 
A savage is roasting his prey at the stake; 

His victim is moaning 

And writhing and groaning 
In all his mad torture must I too partake. 

Beside me some neighbor 
Connives to shirk labor 
And drudges and drones with a hate in his heart; 

71 



His hate disconcerts me 
My courage deserts me 
His thought has impaled me — a venom-tipped dart. 

Above the thronged city 

I hover in pity 
In pity that men like wild cattle should herd. 

No less is my sorrow 

Lone countrymen borrow 
To see their souls stunted — too dead to be stirred. 

Sad spirits command me — 

Shall men understand me? 
Ah, never till men may transcend their mere brain. 

I live and die lonely. 

But if through me only 
One truth be revealed — I am racked not in vain. 



O, Soul! cease repining. 

The sun is still shining 
And Heaven — not Man — thrills response to your cry. 

Though lowlands be dreary, 

Love's summit is cheery; 
Leave spirits earth-shackled. Soar on to the sky. 

For shame to be blaming 

Thought-wanderers, claiming 
That you deserve pity since helpless — their prey 

Why, even the Devil 

A devil's own level 
Must seek. If above it, fear not — face the Day. 

Your senses are finer 

With God their Designer 
That you may approach and appreciate Him. 

For ears must hear keenly. 

And vision see cleanly. 
And heart respond wholly, while thrills frame and limb. 

Sad thoughts must forsake you 

When Love shall once make you 
Receptive to messages higher than Thought. 

For highest is Feeling; 

And Love's true revealing 
Thence dawns to the fullest degree you have sought. 

72 



The Mind has its valley 

Where languid souls dally 
And mourn for a bourne that still beckons beyond. 

Above this vale's shadow 

Invites Eldorado! 
Emerge into space — and of earth be less fond. 

Throughout countless ages 

The spirits of sages 
Have waited to minister swift to your need. 

Call them — not the ghastly 

Grim shades that throng vastly 
To block your strait path. With the prophets proceed. 

Beneath their weird croaking 

All spectres are cloaking 
A fear quite reciprocal, summing your own. 

Be bold and defy them; 

Their mask will belie them, 
And they shall flee fearful. And you reign alone. 

These psychic surroundings 

Are like to the soundings 
Men take to determine the tint of the sea. 

Though shallows be sullied 

By surface streams gullied 
The fathomless deep is as clear as can be. 

Love's ether, grown boundless 

And senseless and soundless 
Shall shelter no longer these breeders of ruth. 

Do mortals defame you? 

Yourself shall proclaim you 
Possessed not of demons — illumined of Truth. 

At last your own master 

Above earth's disaster, 
Above personalities, living or dead, 

Behold the Eternal 

With splendor supernal 
Shall brighten the path where your footsteps have bled. 



73 



Aborted 

The patient ass performs his irksome labor day by day 
Apparently content to drudge his tedious life away. 
But if the ass were made to sing — though singing be by far 
The easier, the brute could not conclude a single bar. 

The lark that flits among the trees was born to ceaseless song; 
Her melodies the sweetest, dearest memories prolong. 
But if the bird were harnessed, thus constrained to drag her load. 
Her silent struggles her eternal stillness would forebode. 

In Man there consummate the orders designated brute 

Whose salient traits through Man's innate Divinity transmute 

Their heavy, shaggy, wild, uncouthly unattractive mould. 

To trace, with dainty beauty, forms an angel might enfold. 

In every man some animal predominates. Its voice 

Should swell above the minor tones, proclaiming loud its choice 

Among the multitudinous vocations men have filled — 

With less success the readier its pleadings they have stilled. 

And yet where dwell the humans, undiscovered to themselves, 

The devils do the work of gods, and fairies that of elves. 

The sweetest songsters of the race are burdened as the ass; 

Those fragrant souls whose mission is to soothe you as you pass 

Are crushed and v/ithered hopelessly beneath the sultry sun. 

That glares relentless on the slave whose task is never done. 

Yet menials born to labor loll about in softest silk 

Though chafed distraught within the gauze that scarce befits their 

ilk. 
And so of all God's creatures, Man alone must grope confused 
Until he learns to sense his powers fatally misused. 
Perhaps in distant ages we shall seek in Nature's ways 
And glean the education whose objective truly pays. 

Rejoice — if you have found your message whose expression gives 
A Messianic motive to the meanest thing that lives. 
But — when you judge the flutterings of soul that may have erred, 
Remember then the tortures of a bound and baffled bird. 



74 



How tlie Dimple Grew 

A maiden once was weeping 
As maidens will you know — 

For in their mystic keeping 

Hold tears both weal and woe — 

When suddenly came stealing 
From no one knew just where, 

Its modesty concealing, 
A smile; so debonair 

That meeting tear first falling 
Athwart the maiden's face 

Its very touch enthralling 
Enclosed in soft embrace 

The drop of sorrow, grieving 
No longer o'er hopes dead. 

And lo, it vanished, leaving 
A dimple in its stead. 



If on your cheek bright beaming 
Whenever smile meets tear; 

A dimple be not gleaming — 
It's in your heart, My Dear. 



75 



The Illegitimaie Cliild 



Isolated, ostracized, barred from men's commingling; 
Hated, feared, shunned, despised; cut with curses tingling 
From the forked tongues of those mouthing in their blindness 
Angry calumnies and woes void of human kindness; 
Branded with a living shame; seared from birth by sorrow; 
Plundered even of the name none may buy or borrow; 
There it stands and shivers, shorn clean of all but being 
Fugitive to Death's bleak bourne; doomed by man's decreeing. 

Vagabond and outcast is the child illicit; 

Stone it — if you dare; hoot it, hound it, hiss it. 

Petted, fondled, crowned, adored, minions at his bidding 
Every obstacle untoward frantically ridding 
From the path of son and heir born in wedlock's cover, 
Life for him is passing fair, "angels" o'er him hover. 
And the future opens wide gates of gilded glory; 
For his mother was a bride. And the mouldy, hoary 
Fiat binding loveless twain twined about the baby 
Laws respectable and sane. If perchance they may be. 

Autocrat and princeling is the heir made legal; 

Bow the knee and render homage due the regal. 

Winds of Heaven, pregnant oft with the seeds of flowers. 
Dare you fructify aloft fields enciente with bowers? 
Birds, free nesting where you will, mating whomsoever 
Instinct authorizes, still old espousals never. 
Shall you not be stricken dead, chancery defying 
Save you make your marriage bed lawfully allying? 
Holy Ghost, in Mary's womb, did some priest permit you? 
Church's rite — not Virgin's bloom, for the Christ-child fit you? 

Parentage illegal — may lacking Law defame us; 

Liason illicit does lacking Love enshame us. 



n 



W/^ ihe Shell Skaiiers 

The seed within the ground though quite intact 

Lies dead 
Until its soaring Soul with longing racked 

Has shed 
The polished crust that cased the Soul at first. 

Some break 
Upon the even surface must have burst, 

To wake 
The sleeping germ to all the natal need 

That Life 
Instils within a growing thing. Indeed 

The strife 
"Twixt Soul and shell — when Souls do most advance. 

Cuts deep. 
It matters not. For Destiny — not Chance 

Shall heap 
Upon itself the circumstances which 

It wrests 
That they emerge whose deep resources rich 

God tests. 

What man has called Misfortune bruises oft 

The shell 
Wherein his Soul that stretches far aloft 

May dwell 
In infancy. Some circumstance abrades; 

Then he 
Bemoans the rended tomb whose figment shades 

Till free 
His stifled Soul. O foolish mortal mind! 

To grieve . 

When shackles shatter and the things that bind 

Relieve 
Their pressure with a sudden snap. For you — 

Your Soul — 
Perceived that if externals should accrue, 

The whole 
Of God would suffer — buried in the clay. 

And so 
You flung your man-afCections clean away — 

To grow. 



77 



A Revetsed Tl^eology 

They picture Hell a soundless pit 
Whose seething vengeance glows 

Where deep sequestered horrors flit 
Beneath a cold world's woes. 

While Heaven floats ethereal 

Enwrapped in holy haze 
Whose canopy empyreal 

Surpasses mortal gaze. 



There is no Heaven, neither Hell 

Save in the eye alone 
That visions deep, below the spell 

Of seeming star or stone. 

If forked lightnings play above. 

And storms revengeful rage 
Propelled by Hate and not by Love — 

Too fiendish to assuage; 

If clouds be dissipated clods 

And Matter all there be; 
The Power some blind Fate's — not God's 

So far as man can see; 

If solar spheres be framed and wrecked 
As churly chance may choose; 

If comets, mad, career unchecked 
Their freedom to abuse; 

If horrid harpies brood on high 

To vex a helpless man; — 
Then Hell all lurid lies awry 

Amid the heavens' span. 



If limpid waters flow along 

A grassy sun-lit shore. 
To murmur low their lapping song 

Of welcome to the roar 

Of Ocean's anthem swelling loud 
Surcharged with Primal Power 

And, conscious of It, justly proud 
To voice It, hour by hour; 



78 



If stones proclaim a sermon heard 

By inner senses true; 
If waving meadows lisp their word 

Of joyousness to you; 

If every tiny bursting bloom 
But throws its petals wide 

To compass more expanding room 
To shed the Love inside; 

If all the worms and weeds that grow 
As fellow-gods you greet; — 

Then Heaven stoops and lingers low 
Beneath your very feet. 



Lo<^e and Dul^ 



Love and Duty made a tryst. 

Duty came but Love he missed; 

Looked around, yet found her not 

Anywhere about the spot. 

Frowned and grumbled, stormed and raved, 

All her path with curses paved; 

Thus did Duty — surly he 

Since he loved not Love, you see. 

Love came late. And with her brought 
That whence Duty's grace she sought. 
"Duty dear, I saw a bird 
Flutter, wounded. Feebly stirred 
This her body racked with pain. 
'Help!' she cried. Nor cried in vain. 
So I stopped to bind her wing. 
See! The bird begins to sing." 

"Take your whole bird-business back," 

Snapped stern Duty. "You must lack 

Common sense and honor too. 

Kept me waiting overdue 

While you patched your piping ward. 

Leave — henceforth to slink abhorred." 

Love and Duty parted then. 

Nor have they been friends again. 



79 



Bohemia Beckons 

Men compose songs to their place of nativity. 

Humans seem mostly addicted to odes 
Bearing the stamp of an inborn proclivity 

Thus to exalt their primeval abodes. 
Ever intent on a shelter locational, 

Hymning their home in a congregant host. 
Wholly forget they that love inspirational 

Functions unfettered the freest and most. 
Songs patriotic that win popularity 

Lauding sequestered some single small place 
Swiftly disintegrate that solidarity 

Said to inhere in the whole human race. 
Love men cannot when the heart is attaching it 

Solely and blindly to circumscribed spot; 
For when Fate seizes the home, roughly snatching it. 

Love evanesces. And such love loves not. 

Am I then homeless and friendless and motherless? 

Have I no heath where my spirit may cling? 
Orphan not only, but sisterless, brotherless. 

Envious thus, other homes hate to sing? 
Homeless I am, yet acknowledge not friendlessness;— 

Friends dear to me loose forever home ties; 
Neither such freedom, affection or endlessness 

Offers a home where home selfishness lies. 
Freeing my spirit, with nothing to fetter it 

Shaking the shackles of family pride. 
Seeking the Love Universal to better it. 

Out from my home henceforth homeless I stride. 
Child of the Universe, let me be sundering 

All the relationships binding a man, 
Since from my Soul proclamation is thundering; — 

"Dwell in Bohemia! Dwell there who can." 

Negligent, tolerant, careless Bohemia, 

Home of the spirit and not of the flesh, 
None of the listlessness there — the anaemia 

Lining the folds of the home's narrow mesh. 
None of the duty, the duty traditional 

Husbands and wives are constrained to obey 
Blights the affections ere Love grow fruitonal; 

Blights them with custom, with honor, with pay. 
Hours and minutes that clang their recessional 

Ever receding with us looking back, 

80 



Clanging the knell of a future progressional, 
Keeping the mind on a sun-dial's rack; 

Human opinions that mob men unreasoning — 

Thoughts of externals, chill shudders at fate — 

Undulant, sinuous, plotting their treasoning 
Burrowing under the mortal mind's gate^ 

Creeds, superstitions, all racial rule rigorous; 

Loyalty, pride, bonds of caste and of sex; 
Usages taut, with a stretch over-vigorous 

Drawn o'er a race that appearance most checks; 
Claims of outsiders that probe superficially 

Into a life which the heart alone knows; 
Penalties, prisons and threats flung judicially 

At the poor soul that must sin as it grows; 
Hedgings and harpings and houndings whose haltering 

Puts a man's neck in the noose of the mind 
Keeps his heart trembling and dreading and faltering 

Lest the noose tighten and death round him wind; 
All these encumbrances humanly harrowing 

Whence a free spirit derives its brief care; 
All the strait tendencies humanly narrowing; — 

These in Bohemia fade into air. 

Genius takes genesis when Freedom beckons it 

Out from the rut and the rule of the throng; 
Genius finds exodus when the world reckons it 

Solely a singer because of its song. 
Here in Bohemia, Genius full-flowering 

Bursts into bloom as a bud in the spring — 
Forth from the depths of it leaps the empowering 

Message this soul was just sent here to bring. 
Talents untouched by the termagants dragging them 

Through education that draws nothing out 
Here are expanded. And grow, with none flagging them 

Greenish with envy or blackish with doubt. 
"Be but yourself!" is the slogan awaking us 

Softly and gently, but mightily too 
Up to the eminence whence we betaking us 

Face the sun fairly — and dare to be true. 

Back in a country where shepherds were tethering 
Closely and carefully flocks feeding near, 

Lived once a Man who evaded the heathering, 
Homing and haunting of spots that endear. 

Though the few friends that He had were all pressing Him 
Somewhere to settle — and best in their home, 

•1 



still He refused them. The Spirit kept blessing Him 

Only so long as He lonely should roam. 
Wife He knew not. And the children He favored most 

All were begotten by some stranger sire; 
For He knew well that a family savored most 

Strongly of duty — and not of desire. 
Speak I with reverence moved by sincerity 

When I declare that the Christ lived as I; 
Free to unfold with a facile celerity 

In a Bohemia founded on High. 



A Fledgeling Flulters 

When a birdling nesting 

Its powers testing 
Attempts to fly, with a flutter wild; 

The mother-bird hovers 

And lovingly covers 
The unformed wings of her restless child. 

The little one knowing 

It still is growing 
Then trusts the mother and lies content. 

Its wings maturing 

Shall soon be assuring 
The promise kept of delay well spent. 

When I, grown restless, 

Would fain be nestless 
And toss my flightless wings about; 

The God-Mother, wiser 

Than child who defies Her, 
Just presses me back ere I venture out. 

I trust completely, 

I sink back sweetly. 
Await the wings that must slowly grow. 

Till at last endowered 

As She, full-powered, 
I shall soar with the gods. Not trust — but know. 



S2 



Finding the Focus 



Let a little baby point a telescope 

At the sun 
Scanning with his feeble gaze the stellar slope 

Bare eyes shun. 

If perchance the focus fit his tiny sight 

He may see; 
But if not, the solar beam celestial bright 

Blurred must be. 

Then the peevish infant blames the sun that hides; 

Dull of wit 
Breaks the glass wherein his impotence abides, 

Bit by bit. 



You — a baby soul, direct your glass toward Truth. 

Truth is blurred — 
Ignorance, and trembling hold, and fitful youth. 

These have erred. 

When the hand of Knowledge sets the focus true 

As it will. 
Skilled to blend the Light peculiarly for you; 

Patient still 

Since you trust the staunch support that Faith supplies 

Always best; 
Then shall Truth reveal her splendors where your eyes 

Peaceful rest. 



83 



The Place Auspicious 

There exists in God's Creation 

Some spot where a man may brood 

And bend with a just elation 
Success from his every mood. 

Does he long to span the heavens 
With achievements unsurpassed? 

'Tis the mountain's breath that leavens 
The hopes that attain at last. 

Does he weary of his striving 
And yearn for a place of rest 

Remote from his mad contriving? 
Then the ocean lulls the best. 

Once God had a busy hour 
And a time for tranquil joys; 

So He clothed the hills with His Power, 
But the sea with His peerless Poise. 



S4 



A Surcliarged Flood 

A mountain gorge was dammed across by sticks 

Which lads would fix 
To hold the leaping cataract, whose flow 

Restrained below 
Accomodates their play. The bashful ooze 

Its force must lose 
When dabbled in and sailed with chips upon. 

Asparkle shone 
Their eyes short-sighted. Every rivulet 

Whose moisture wet 
Their eager touch, appeared as if they owned. 

They them enthroned, 
Proud masters of the sea. Exalted they 

Their dam of clay 
So lofty that they clean forget the surge 

Whose rise must urge 
Impetuous, resistless as the tide; — 

And then deride 
All artificial walls. Too late to flee 

Amazed they see 
A raging torrent sweeping down the slope. 

It gulfs their hope 
And them together buffeted and bruised. 

Since they misused. 
Despised, diminished stream and source, its path 

Exhales its wrath. 



My restless Soul a sea of power roars 

And ceaseless pours 
Its mighty volume hard against the dam 

Whose fragile sham 
Decaying barricade men dared to build. 

At last, flood-filled 
The barriers grown impotent shall snap. 

I hope mayhap 
Yon loiterers have seen Me surge sublime 

In tardy time 
To make their wild escape. But oh, if not 

I can but blot 
Their slight, obstructing forms to nothingness. 

WSiile I progress. 



as 



God Only 



I wandered one day where the masters had hung 

The works of their prime. 
And men in admiring multitudes sung 

Their genius sublime. 
Unmoved by the technical torsions of Art 
I stood in my loneliness, silent, apart. 
Could daubs from a palette find place in my heart? 

Why, I have seen God! 

I sat in my pew while the organ's grand peal 

Poured forth into song, 
Whose echoes aroused an ephemeral zeal 

In hearts of the throng. 
One note in a thousand gave me scare a thrill. 
Can organ and organist's harmonies fill 
This heart with their rapture? Though voices be still 

My heart yet hears God. 

I scanned the great books of the sages, piled high 

On library shelves. 
Inscribed by the learned, adept to espy 

All themes save themselves. 
Their facts and their figures, — their logical claims. 
Their quibbles and quarrels, — their titular names 
Repelled me aghast at such lore as defames 

A mind that spans God. 

I kissed a pure maiden with reverent touch — 

A lover's caress. 
For I was a youth, and a maiden meant much 

I could but confess. 
Then suddenly shot from the sky a great Light, 
In letters of gold that shone clear through the night 
This vision indelible burned my sad sight; — 

"Thou wooest? Woo God." 

Proceed in your tiny attempts to portray 

The Infinite Soul. 
Sing on with a voice like a Lorelei lay — 

Let melodies roll. 
Though pleasures be thick as the sands by the sea 
They pass unmolested the spirit of Me. 
Prime heir to the raptures of souls that be free 

This soul knows its God. 



86 



''Abandoned'* 

The sun had left them to themselves. And as the stars came out 
They nestled closer — lovers true. The daylight of their doubt 
That but disclosed the wizened form of surface things of men 
Had vanished since the darkness helped them sense their souls. 
For when 

Two lovers let themselves forget 

The sterile standards men have set, 
Then God enfolds them with a love no man has measured yet. 

From every tender touch where'er her lover's hands had strayed 
A thrill had quivered through her. All his soft caresses made 
The maiden's inborn touch motherhood leap up in mighty throbs 
Until her virgin passion's longing swayed her with its sobs. 

And then the God of him and her. 

Too pure to sin — too wise to err 
Just mated as the birds, nor thought whose blame It might incur. 

When they awoke, from out the dream of Love's forgetful bliss 
A flower blossomed where the two had met — and left a kiss. 
Though formed in wondrous beauty, still the little human bud 
Was flung beneath the heel of men, and trampled in the mud. 

"Abandoned woman," cried the world. 

As on the child its curses hurled 
An odium that blasts that over which its scorn has curled. 

Amid an equal solitude, to worlds both deaf and dumb 
An artist clasped a spirit-form. He prayed, "Creator, come!" 
"Oh Mother Inspiration, bear a child of brain and heart 
V/hose message to the souls of men shall be of God — apart." 

His prayer came true. Upon the child 

Vv^as heaped men's adulation wild; 
This child reposed in marble — only flesh can be defiled. 



Then God looked down. And God was wroth. And God said, 

"Stay in Hell, 
O evil-minded world. Nor ever hope in bliss to dwell 
So long as you blaspheme the sacred stream of Love whose course 
Winds in and out of Heaven, with Abandonment its source. 

Abandoned must the lover be. 

As thoughtlessly abandoned he 
Who weds the Spirit. Genius, Love — and God must all be free." 



87 



W/^ete Dwells ike Sanlit Soul 

You may dream of your quaint old Swiss chalet 
With its edelweiss adorning, 

Where a tangent Sun prolongs the day- 
Through a lustrous, white-limned morning; 

You may laud the castle that Briton bold 
Has built with the wealth accruing 

From his lieges robbed and chattels sold 
For his ultimate undoing; 

You may hymn sweet odes to the Fatherland 

Deep loyalty professing — 
And the tender touch of your Gretchen's hand 

Keeps time, with its caressing; 

You may choose your home beneath the flag 

Of Freedom gaily waving. 
While the masses in its shadow drag 

To a close their sullen slaving; 

You may bind your love to any spot 

In earth or heavens lying; 
And you cramp the Soul, that narrows not 

To a planet doomed and dying. 

For the North and South and East and West 
Of the heart's congenial dwelling 

Abide beyond the compass' test. 

In a world whose music swelling 

No human ear can ever sense 

Nor human eye the gleaming 
Of glorious visions, rising whence 

The Real belies the Seeming. 

For the hills of Hope are an Eastern slope 

Whose sun is always smiling; 
But the vale of Fear spans a darkness drear 

Where the West its night is whiling; 

And the chill of Hate blows a North-cold fate 
That blights the soul unfolding; 

While the breath of Love from realms above 
Is the South wind's blessing holding. 



You may house your body in Afric's plain 
Or an Iceland hut's enclosure; 

But the Sun of your Soul shall never wane 
In its own South-East exposure. 



Life's Husbandman 



A husbandman of harvests, wise, minutely provident and skilled 

Selects the fairest, choicest seed 

To fructify his special need. 
Commits it then to soil that yields the most and best for being 
tilled. 

But first he plows a furrow where before the barren earth had hid 

Beneath her sterile surface deep 

Her fruitful womb that lay asleep 
Until aroused by seed whose touch her motherhood shall softly 
bid. 

To right or left the plowman glances not. He fixes straight ahead 

His keenly unremitting gaze. 

And, lest he stray in crooked ways. 
He views some distant object with a near. Thus true his course 
is led. 



A husbandman of Life, within my brain I guard a thousand kinds 

Of thoughts, that quickly germinate 

And harvests like themselves create 
When once they fall upon the fields of Cosmic or atomic minds. 

I sift and sift and sift again the germ-potentials in my Thought 

To choose and use the very best — 

Forgot, let Time inter the rest; 
And then I find the spot on earth for just this seed with promise 
fraught. 

I dig my tedious furrow, caring not what loiterers may say; 

The parched earth may burn my feet; 

The long, hard toil may seem ill mete 
To satisfy a husbandman with aching limbs at close of day. 

But still I persevere. For two bright points allure me on and on. 

A great Ideal beckons me 

Beyond the Real mortals see. 
My harvest shall appear, when long enough the S'j.:i of Truth 
has shone. 



89 



Tlie Unfinislied Portzait 



A crude and formless mass of color lies 
Upon a canvas, while the artist rests. 
Design is lacking. There is none so wise 
As but to hazard what the daub suggests. 
Grotesquely purposeless the spots appear 
As if the painter, whelmed in sudden rage. 
Had flung his implements with folly sheer 
Where ruin greatest might his wrath assuage. 
The palette too is utterly devoid 
Of any slightest touch denoting Art. 
Its surface everywhere is queerly cloyed 
With tints prepared to blend, yet left apart. 
Are blotches spattered here and there the sign 
Of that peculiar temperamental gift 
Whose tracings pencil concepts most divine? 
We question thus, the mystery to sift 
And ponder deeply, till the man returns 
Whose recklessness where colors are involved 
Apparently our condemnation earns. 
But speedily the culprit is absolved; 
For lo, a few swift strokes from magic brush 
Descending here and there with deftest grace 
Disclose a face illumed with beauty's blush 
That seems to light the whole surrounding place. 

The artist puts together tones and shades 
From off a palette any man may find; 
But previous to tint that blurs and fades — 
He blends the form ideal in his mind. 



If God the Master Artist now and then 
Must rest and leave a little while the Plan 
Whereat He labors long, perfecting men. 
Shall humans with their lesser judgment scan 
The portrait still unfinished — then despise 
Both it and Him who paints it? Let us wait; 
Believing not our grossly holden eyes. 
Until the final stroke descend from Fate. 

For though my beauty lie potential yet 
Promiscuous upon a palette's shelf. 
The Infinite enjoins me not to fret — 
He paints the while an Image of Himself! 



90 



Blind Deity Prays 

I prayed for Fame and a laurel wreath, 

A budding diadem beneath, 

A magic wand in a fairy sheath; 

To ease my lot. 
I asked that purbind word should see 
What merit might abide in me; 
But God said, "Fame is not for thee." 

So Fame came not. 

I prayed for Power and a mighty hand 
To sway whole worlds at my command 
And marshal many an eager band 

Success to seek; 
But God said, "Prayers do but confuse 
Save thou art competent to use 
The boons thy foolish heart would choose." 

I still lay weak. 

I prayed for Wealth and a countless hoard 
To buy me circumstances toward 
From vast accumulations stored 

To back my bond; 
But God said, "Tempt not thus thy fate. 
Until thou hast some purpose great 
Mere riches scant could compensate." 

Wealth gleamed beyond. 

I prayed for Beauty — that sweet grace 
Which hallows every winsome face 
And makes, where'er its homing-place, 

Glad smiles abound; 
But God said, "Thoughtless thou hast sought 
What never has been loaned or bought. 
True Beauty from the Soul is wrought." 

My mirror frowned. 

Disheartened then I ceased from prayer 

To find my one and constant care 

A quest for Love. Searched everywhere — 

Both cloud and clod. 
And then a wondrous joy possessed 
My being. For at my behest 
The prayers were answered, each thrice-blest; 

Since I was God! 



91 



My Infinite Self 



In tune with every lark's unsullied song; 
With disembodied spirits as they throng; 
With harps of angels thrilled the air along; 

I sing pure Me. 
The mind of Me has purged within its ken 
What things may seem impure to blinded men. 
For I have sifted sins, and yet again; 

No taint bear we. 

Within the flower whose fragrance stintless flows; 
Within the grain that flaunts its luscious rows; 
Within the maiden's cheek which bards disclose; 

I sense sweet Me. 
The heart of Me pours forth its perfume rare 
So lavish that the passer-by may share 
Its fragrance hanging heavy on the air 

At Love's decree. 

Behind the hugely whirling cataract; 
Behind the fierce tornado's wasting tact; 
Behind the dread volcano, passion-racked; 

I sway strong Me. 
The might of Me in all its cosmic dower 
Restrains itself, though cataclysms shower. 
It fears to show a fraction of its power. 

Lest men should flee. 

Below the fens and bogs and black morass; 
Below the viprous haunts our shudders pass; 
Below the bowels of the earth so crass; 

I sound deep Me. 
The brain of Me has force to penetrate 
The deepest problems of the nascent great; 
And wrest thenceforth proud mastery of Fate, 

Whate'er Fate be. 

Above the clouds that lift their dreamy haze; 
Above the stars that bend their earnest gaze; 
Above the zenith of the solar blaze; 

I vaunt high Me. 
The Soul of Me transcends this realm of clay 
And soars to where the light of endless day 
Illumines them who to the Earthless pray; 

From worlds set free. 



92 



Beyond the ocean's far horizon dim; 
Beyond the setting sun's departing glim; 
Beyond the limits we ascribe to Him; 

I spread vast Me. 
The scope of Me is boundless, soundless, grand. 
No being save my Soul vouchsafes command. 
What distance Omnipresence may have spanned 

My eye can see. 

Before the hills had heaped their bulging brow; 
Before the waters might their banks endow; 
Before the birth of Time's immortal Now; 

I trace prime Me. 
The seed of Me — the Spirit's formless seed. 
Existed in the hope that moulds the deed 
A million years ere sprang this human breed 

As he and she. 

Throughout the Manifest that men discern; 
Throughout the Ether earthy mortals spurn; 
Throughout the Love whence mind and matter turn; 

I laud Lord Me. 
For I alone, the One Eternal I, 
Both clot the clod and dome the cloud-flecked sky. 
And thus at last the lowly with the high 

In Me agree. 



Fot the Song's Own Sake 

The Lark will warble sweetly whether humans hear or not 

To echo back a bird's unbounded joy; 
The Rose will waft its fragrance to the drearest desert spot 

Where none may melt its breath to perfume coy. 

My Soul must sing. I care not whether men applaud the song 

Or even sense it light on heavy ears; 
My Heart must love. And if it cannot touch the human throng 

'Twill spend itself upon the distant spheres. 



93 



A Tottering Tripod 



To build the creaking timbers of the place that we call home 
In some deep dell 
To treasure well 
The trinkets 'neath its dome; 
Forgetting that the Infinite of which we form a part 
Pervades all Space, 
Too vast for Place — 
That narrows mind and heart; — 

To twine our brief affections with a close tenacious grasp 
That cares for naught 
Save object sought — 
Some selfish human clasp; 
And then when personality falls off — a shell outgrown 
To sob and sigh 
That friends must die 
And we be left alone; — 

To measure Life and its success by Time's short-sighted span; 
To call Fate hard 
If she retard 
The making of a man; 
And yet one thought, embosomed in the Limitless may lie 
A thousand years 
Ere it appears 
To such as you and I; — 

To stand in fine upon this tripod tottering and frail 
Of Person, Place, 
And Time's scant grace; 
Then tremblingly to quail 
When each support decays and falls, as finally it must; — 
This makes a worm 
That creeps infirm 
And crumbles back to dust. 

To dwell unwalled, forever free amid the suns and stars; 
To stand unmoved 
Till Time has proved 
The wisdom of her scars; 
To sense the Soul within the shell, to tear the mask from Death; 
And know that Life 
Transcends the strife 
Of fleeting human breath; 

94 



To give unstintingly one's best — all careless of result — 
And whether gain 
Be vast or vain. 
Supremely to exult; 
To love the Universe as one that human touch endears;- 
This makes a god 
That shall have trod 
The circuit of the spheres. 



The First Dream 

A billion years ago 

And then a billion more 

Before the flux and flow 

On ocean's rock-bound shore. 

Ere suns began to rise 

Or stars presumed to shine; 

I owned the unformed skies— 

The Universe was Mine. 

And then I dreamed a dream 
Amid My loneliness; 
I saw the splendid gleam 
Of suns I should possess. 
The hum of world on world. 
The prattle too of man, 
As solar cycles whirled 
Their orbits, span on span. 

Though nothing had appeared 
As yet to warrant Me 
To hope My vision weird 
Would ever surely be. 
My hope still rose supreme 
I knew no lack nor need — 
For Chaos was the dream 
And Cosmos is the deed. 



95 



/ Am That I Am 

You a human fill your mortal mind 
Plethoric with facts you strain to find, 
Heaping them within a mental rut 
Darkening the sides whereof o'erjut 
But — 
I the Mindless, Universal Consciousness need not 
Learning, reason, all the brain that men to them have got. 
Men teach fact — I but act 
Men would kneel — I would feel 
Men must ask — I unmask 
Through the endless cycles I have marked Me every spot. 

You bestow your liking here and there 
Making residence your crucial care; 
Banished from your heath you pine and fret 
On location all your longing set 
Yet — 
I, the All in All, the great I Am pervading space 
Hide Me in the coarsest clod as in the flower's grace. 
Friend and Foe — Joy and Woe 
Smile and Tear — Hope and Fear 
Peace and Strife — Death and Life 
I abide the Soul of these, no matter what their face. 

You must manufacture great machines 
Even thence Achievement scantly gleans; 
You before the product of your skill 
Wax distraught till Time its measure fill 
Still — 
I the Deathless, I the Birthless, I the Changeless stand: 
Planets melt and worlds dissolve in dust at My command. 
Babes are born — homes left lorn 
Fortunes gripped — beggars stripped 
Kingdoms owned — kings dethroned 
Mist is matter, matter mist, beneath My Cosmic Hand. 

Mortal, bind you not with human chains; 
Free your Soul from human wants and pains; 
Picture you as pure as sunset tints. 
See yourself reflected in their glints 
Since — 
I am You and You are I. Together we evolved; 



96 



Both from Formless Unity and back must be resolved. 

Flee men's din — look within. 

Just be You — boldly true. 

Then and thus — deep in Us 
Omniscience, Omnipresence and Omnipotence are solved. 



When the day is disappearing 

And the shades of Night are nearing 

And the distant hills are rearing 

Their retreats of rest; 
From the fragrant breezes thrilling 
All my soul with rapture filling 
I recall the hour stilling 

That I love the best. 

When the bells a-tinkle chiming 
At the homing Twilight-timing 
Tell the kine are slowly climbing 

From the grass-clothed vale. 
Then my spirit likewise soaring 
Hears a chime whose swell outpouring 
Keeps my quickened heart adoring 

With its echo frail. 

As the lads and maids returning 
From their toil, I too am learning 
That my brain must cease from earning 

Its relentless wage. 
Let my senses sinking, sleeping 
Trust the airy spirits sweeping 
Whence the angels, kindly keeping 

Guard the day's new page. 

Down beside the listening willows 
Spreads the pool its placid pillows 
Where its long-forgotten billows 

Used to lash the deep. 
There the water-lily lying 
Proves how futile is my sighing 
For the things whose ebb is dying 

Ere the hour for sleep. 



97 



Though the mountain, mystic looming 
Stands in peace forever dooming 
Transient fears whose vain presuming 

Makes a man lose heart; 
Firmer yet am I, abiding 
Evermore to offer hiding 
For the soul that comes confiding, 

Seeks a place apart. 

Through the turmoil and collision 
Of the Day I see a vision 
Where a prospect Paradisian 

Wooes the soul to peace. 
Through the silence and oppression 
Of the Midnight's retrogression 
Still that hour's clear confession 

Bids forebodings cease. 

Human strife and human straining 

For a profitless attaining 

Must subside upon the waning 

Of the sun's bright ray; 
For when once we cease to see them — 
Earthy objects — we shall flee them. 
From our earthless spirits free them. 

Things that thrall by day- 
Make a truce with blind Ambition! 
Let the Soul's more sane fruition 
Prove once more a human's mission 

On this earth below. 
Rest awhile among the flowers 
Through the wondrous dreamy hours 
Of the Twilight, that empowers 

More than mortals know. 



Yet more dear than Nature's wooing 
More intent than shades' pursuing 
More sublime than gods' imbuing 

Comes a dream of one 
Whose perfection sums Creation. 
By her side my Soul's elation 
Marks a great illumination 

Brighter than the sun. 



98 



If no reason e'er existed 
For my sympathies enlisted 
Save that you and I had trysted 

In the Twilight calm; 
Still should I with tributes ringing: 
To the hour of spirits winging 
Find my Soul the sweeter singing 

All of Life's glad psalm. 

Hand in hand, my Sweetheart, roaming 
Through the tender, peaceful gloaming. 
This, Dear Love, is all the homing 

That my spirit needs. 
What is sleep — with your embracing? 
Love's oblivion effacing 
Spreads a veil with magic lacing 

Whence new life proceeds. 

Can an angel's evening blessing 
Bring the thrill of your caressing 
Which in transport I possessing 

Quiver through and through? 
Is the hope of Heaven higher 
Than the sum of my desire 
That whatever you require 

I may be to you? 

Can the Twilight's soft descending 
Be more sweet than two souls blending 
While together homeward wending 

To the realm of Love? 
Sweetheart Mine, your loving taught me 
When thus heavenward it caught me 
More than Twilight ever brought me; 

More of things above. 



L.ofa 



99 



A Beacon to Eternity 

Upon a barren island stands 
To light aloft the distant lands 
A spiral tower that commands 

A clean horizon-vision. 
But all its base lies drear and dark; 
Where tiny creatures cold and stark 
Permit their corpses' wake to mark 

A cruel tide's collision. 

Far out along the trackless deep 
Whose midnight storms relentless sweep 
'Tis there the lights their vigil keep 

The jagged reefs defying. 
Once perished full a thousand men 
In total outer darkness, when 
The Lighthouse held within its ken 

The creatures near it dying. 



Along the distant line I loom. 

Beside me creatures meet their doom; 

I see them not — the outer gloom 

With wilder moaning beckons. 
I light the shoreless, soundless Sea 
That humans call Eternity. 
And that is why the Soul of Me 

No mortal ever reckons. 



100 



OCT 16 



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